Green green grass

I have a confession: I love cutting the grass. Yes I admit I love getting the lawn mower out and going back and forth cutting that grass that just keeps on growing. I find it relaxing. I find it good exercise. I find I think a lot and sometimes not at all. It's a cliché but I love the smell of cut grass in the morning.....oh dear think I'm mixing up my sayings... Apocalypse Grass Cutting Now.

I started young, cutting the lawn at home. There was a lot of it but I loved the achievement and actually I guess it was one of the first grown-up jobs I was allowed to do on my own. I loved the stripes on the lawn from the roller on the mower and I loved how it would transform the garden on a sunny day. Long grass to short grass and all is well in the world.

As I write this I wonder if I have a thing for grass! One of my very favourite things in the summer is to walk along a path of cut grass which runs through long grass. Last year I tried to recreate the look at 88, leaving a swathe of long grass through which I cut a path. But we have children and football was played and the long stems were squashed.

I am very happy though now as the grass cutting season is upon us. I am even happier as we have inherited my mum's lawn mower which has a roller on and a grass collecting box. The grass may not be perfect - it has moss and weeds in - but it's all in beautiful stripes. Oh I'm happy. For me the grass is always green.

Daisy Daisy

Just been for my annual hunt for marguerites - bright, cheerful daisy-like flowers that will gladden my heart from now until the first frosts. My auntie/godmother introduced them to me, buying me some plants to put in pots for my back yard when I lived in my terrace house. I plant them every year at 88 as a homage to her. Dead head them and they just keep coming. Pick a few for a small vase or float the flower heads in a pretty bowl of water. I also have grape hyacinths which are up at the moment for her. I always regret that I didn't dig those little deep blue grape arrows up from her garden when she passed and transfer them to a pot. But I didn't and I lost the continuity, the handing on down but never mind.

My auntie loved gardening. She was I suppose from the old fashioned school of horticulture with lots of bedding plants and separate rose bushes around a green square of grass. I swear she sometimes swept that soil - there wasn't a weed to be detected. Her garden always looked loved and tendered. It was her pleasure.

It was all the more tragic when she suffered a debilitating stroke in her early sixties just as she had retired. She could no longer garden herself after that and I think it broke her heart really. She died in 2005 but every year I think of her with love and fondness when I see the grape hyacinths and I plant the marguerites. Here's to you, Auntie Ivy x