Introducing New Grumpost*
- hopkinsonfrank
- Nov 29, 2015
- 2 min read
A few weeks ago I outlined what a titan of the environment I was, one of Surbiton’s foremost eco-warriors and hardcore conservationists.
This is based on me not mowing the lawn at the most aesthetic moment and waiting for both plants and fungi to complete their natural life cycle. Through torpor more than anything else. At University I was taught Ecology by Professor Bryn Green who always referred to it as mowin’. Mowin’, cuttin' and grazin’ often occurred in the same sentence much to his students' amusememt, though I can never remember him saying harvestin’.
Ultimately the back lawn’s final cut couldn’t wait any longer and today I went out there to complete the task. And in the process made gardening history. Because I discovered “Grumpost” TM
All my fungi had shrivelled at the sign of the first frost, the puffballs were deepening to brown in their post-puff state. It was time to go.
Mowing old puff-balls is actually a lot of fun. I didn’t realise I had mowed one at first, until the geriatric Mountfield was engulfed by a cloud of brown spores as it passed over. These were puff-balls that had blown their top and withered, so there was obviously a fair stock of spores left in the cap after the first wave had been emitted.
Now, we all know that too much grass deposited in a solid block in a compost bin does not make good compost. But my unique discovery is that if you leave it late enough and wait until you get a sprinkling of leaves on the lawn, hey presto. You get an interesting melange of birch leaves and grass with a soupcon of beech and a light sprinking of apple thrown in.
The grassbox of the mower became a leaf-box with an interesting glass glaze.
This process is also very time efficient because it means that the resident OCD ‘leaf lady’ (see Grumpy Gardener’s Handbook) stops twitching to get out there and remove every single leaf from the garden.
Now, you might say ‘people have been doing that for years’. And that is true. But as far as I know, nobody’s put a name on it. “Grumpost” TM . You heard it here first.
