Mowing the lawn is fantastic exercise. There’s no end to the number of muscles you can tweak, pull or strain, and when your work is done you can lie back in your deckchair and admire the results of all your efforts. And believe me, you’ll need a sit down, because after only a few mowing sessions without doing a proper warm-up routine first, you won’t be able to stand.

Fortunately, I still have youth middle age on my side. How else could I get away with the wrong way of bending down to pick up a massive bolus of grass cuttings? Technically, you’re supposed to bend your knees, not your back, but I casually ignored best practice and just stretched down to grab a grassy handful; no ill effects at all. Mind you, I do sometimes extend one leg backwards slightly, ballet-style, to provide the necessary balance, but I make sure no-one’s watching at the time.

If we had a petrol or electric mower the job would only be a little faster than with our antiquated push-mower. The fact that I don’t use a grass collecting box is simply a lifestyle choice. Yes, I do have to use a lawn rake to sweep up the cuttings afterwards (thus avoiding the potential problem of ‘thatch’ because of not allowing the lawn adequate drainage) but that time spent clearing up cuttings gives me extra time for a bit of horticultural philosophy. And I was raking away a couple of days back and thinking that, come midsummer, I might even have amassed enough grass cuttings to start making hay bales. Wouldn’t that give the neighbours something to talk about!

Composting, rather than baling, though, is this year’s pet project. Getting the optimum mix of greens and browns is what it’s all about. The dark arts of ‘grassboarding‘ are what I am learning. You thought it was a CIA interrogation technique, didn’t you? No, that’s waterboarding–and there’ll be none of that this year, owing to drought conditions and a hosepip ban (much better than what the spellchecker suggested, btw) in our part of perfidious Albion.

Regular(ish) compost progress reports will, naturally, appear on this blog on an as-and-when basis. Be sure to stay tuned and feel free to take notes if it helps you remember; or take the mickey if it helps you feel superior. But at the end of the season, if you haven’t paid attention, I’ll be the one with a ‘hot heap‘ and you’ll be the one with a mound of slime. who’ll be the April Fool then?

Always keen to try unusual ideas in horticulture and lawn prettification, I’ve been considering the practices of those wacky New Age gardeners and pagan plantsmen. Many of them believe in planting, watering and harvesting by following the phases of the Moon. Plant at full moon and this ensures a good crop, water when the moon is gibbous and your fruit and vegetables will be bigger and of better quality. blahblahblah, cobblerscobblerscobblers.

I thought about it for a while and then I began to see the impracticalities. To mow the lawn accurately by moonlight, I’d need to go out wearing a miner’s lamp. (Better make sure there aren’t too many people around to see that, eh?) And if it’s really cloudy I’d probably need to fix headlights to the front of the mower. How long do you think it’d be before I got arrested on suspicion of illegal lamping?

If only I were more mechanically minded I could have rigged up a nifty little device to allow me to mow the lawn even after a heavy downpour. Unfortunately, I lack the technical know-how and have thus been denied the delights of trying a new invention I thought of earlier.

If anyone out there has a few bits of Meccano, Lego, nuts ‘n’ bolts and the odd electric motor lying around and you know a bit about basic wiring and have enough life insurance just in case, then here, free, gratis and for booger-all, is my brainwave of the week. I’ll just throw you the idea; figure out the details for yourself.

(By the way, like my previous thoughts on strand tests for lawns, this was also inspired by Shana’s recent foray into hair colouring, although to be totally honest, she didn’t use a hair-drier afterwards: we have a mangle.)

All you need to do is fix some sort of hot-air blower under the mower. Borrow and cannibalise somebody’s hair-drier if you need to. You have to position it in such a way, obviously, that it doesn’t interfere with the mower blades; otherwise, that kinda defeats the object of the exercise. How it works is your mower will hover on a cushion of hot air. This automatically dries the grass so it’s suitable for cutting. The blades, which you’ll somehow have to adjust so they can still perform their normal function while all this hovercraft-like floaty business is going on, can then provide the perfect cut.

If you can work that lot out and build it without maiming or electrolyting yourself in the process, don’t forget that, as the actual concept was mine, I’m entitled to a nominal fee, and if I don’t get it, I’ll sue your butt off.

Yesterday morning (Sunday) there was some light rain; not enough to soak the grass, but enough to provide me with another excuse to delay the mowing. I had technical reasons too, inspired, strange as it may seem, by Shana’s recent adventures in hair colouring. I remember reading somewhere that a proper professional hairdresser, when asked to colour someone’s hair (especially if the customer has not had colour applied before), should always perform what is known in the haircare trade as a ‘strand test‘. Basically, they’re supposed to try out their evil chemicals on a mere few wisps before they set to and dye your entire barnet.

Applying the same principle to the science of lawn management, I mulled over the idea of not a strand test but a blade test: take one blade of grass and check it for excess moisture (dampness being the mortal enemy of mowers, of course) and, when no-one’s looking, adding sufficient moisture so as to be able to invoke the ‘rain stops play’ rule, so to speak.

In the end, though, I didn’t bother. I just brazened it out instead. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ I yawned, and Shana nodded in agreement. [Note: if printing out this post on your fax machine, feel free to grab the nearest pencil and add 'LOL' here. Reader participation: that's what people like these days.]