The Philosophy of Lawn Mowing and the Sweetness of Summer.

Happy Canada Day! Summer is finally here on the island!  Warm temps, gentle breezes, mosquitos and black flies and of course GRASS.

Coming from a place where grass grows in the spring rain of March and April and then goes golden brown for the long, hot, dry, summers (unless irrigated with imported water) I still find it amazing that it grows like crazy here. Acres and acres of the stuff! Big beautiful lawns and well kept yards are a source of local pride and regular mowing on PEI.  You'll observe the Provincial flag even features trees and grass.  I make note that the lawn tractor is missing from heraldry. Surely an oversight.  But the flag does include the Royal Lion of England. So we welcome the Duke and Duchess, William and Kate, to our fair island this week! No doubt there will be a frenzy of mowing to prepare each and every venue for their visit.  In fact, there should be a photo-op of the duchess riding a lawn tractor in shorts, a tank top and a big floppy hat.

In the days before mowing machines your yard literally had to be cut by hand with a scythe. So a small yard with a kitchen garden made sense.  The rest of the ground was turned over to livestock and cropping.  Animals stayed close by and fed on the grass.  Easier to manage and watch over. And more productive too.  Large expanses of closely cropped grass are an artifact of a time when sheep grazed about the manor home (where your daddy or mine mucked out the barn and mum washed the clothes of His Lordship). It was a sign of wealth. Having good land not planted to the margins with food says, "well mate, you must be doing alright". Perhaps that explains our desire for a suburban lawn watered by a river 300 miles away or 2 or more hours a week driving a  mowing machine.  We're all just sort of keeping up appearances - at a huge cost. Weird, isn't it?

Our two "hay burners" burned through last years hay harvest over the winter.  And they are more than willing to go out on the grass every morning.  They really don't care where the grass is, so we've taken to moving the electric fence every few days to where the grass is rich and then turn them loose to do what they do.  Which is eat...and excrete.  It's a lovely combination of feeding, mowing and fertilization in one step. And as I reported last time, the chickens too are doing their part in the war on grass, bugs and spreading fertilizer as they go.  You can't beat mother nature for operating in a closed system.

Even so I just can't seem to stay off the lawn mower.  I just can't help noticing how nice things look when they're all trimmed up. But you know, I think I will put sheep on the front lawn around the house this summer - just to try them out on the job. It's funny that the mower works until it's empty and leaves wasted grass and energy behind.  The animals work until they're full, taking in energy and leaving behind valuable fertilizer for greener grass. It just seems more sensible to let the animals do the work and earn their keep. Besides,
it's picturesque as hell.    

And speaking of picturesque, here are Toby and his buddy Owen making ice cream on the front porch for Canada Day.  We bought  lobster suppers at the Murray Harbour North Community Hall and then enjoyed home made vanilla ice cream made even sweeter by the hand cranking of children.  Making home made ice cream in an old freezer is a ritual passed to us by our parents and grand parents.  It now passes to our children as part of the celebration of summer!