With all this work on the house, interspersed of course with plenty of cragging action, we returned one day to realise that the garden out the back had been having a bit of a grow. Quite a lot of one really, the grass was above our knees and some of the weeds were nearly head height.Off to buy a petrol strimmer (it's a big garden!), which promptly broke within five minutes use. But wait! What's this lurking beneath the ivy in one of the outbuildings? It was a scythe, and a big and very sharp one at that.
Now my only experience of scythes came from pictures of the grim reaper and from a classic line in Blackadder, but I couldn't help getting excited at the idea of going all agricultural, so out I went one fine morning.
Three hours later I had aches in places I didn't know I had muscles and I had sunstroke. But I'd scythed my way through what seemed like acres of rampant undergrowth and I could collapse in an armchair knowing that a)I could feel smug about goung all manual and traditional, and b) it would be much easier next time when I'd been back to the shop and replaced the strimmer!
Back to chez Arran site
