Messy garden

At the end of summer, after almost no weeding, and no lawnmowing since Richard did half of it in mid-July, our garden looks a mess. Weeds seem to grow without any water at all, and around the citrus trees, which I water weekly, they've been growing even more strongly.



But summer IS coming to an end. This morning I went out to water the trees first thing, as I usually do on Saturdays, and instead of feeling too hot to continue by about 8.30, I still felt reasonably cool. Cool, of course, is relative: the thermometer was showing about 28C, and a few years ago I'd have considered that unbearably hot. But we do acclimatise somewhat.

So having taken the photo, I got out the lawnmower which Tim mended for me last week. I just thought I'd cut the worst of the weeds. To my surprise, I managed to cut about a third of the garden in about half an hour - all the front part. The sun had come out, though, and it was too hot to continue.


The part beyond the citrus trees is almost all weeds with very little grass, and currently extremely dusty so it's not easy to cut. But there's an interesting creeping weed which provides good groundcover, and seems to stop other weeds growing through. We're encouraging this one; it only seems to grow to about 10cm high, so it's easy to trim with the lawnmower. This is what it looks like close up.