Mowing Lawns - Mini Flowers On and About My Lawn

I don't like having to mow lawns. Here in the Waikato they grow too fast.  But I do like the neat look after I've mown them and the small weedy flowers that grow on them in the summer give me much joy - and the exercise is good. Under a magnifying glass the flowers are quite beautiful. Their presence is a testament to the state my lawns.

Here are a few photos of some of them in my lawn this year and a poem about my love/hate relationship with lawns.

Pratia

Ranunculus

Bellis (Common Daisy)

Modiola (Mallow)

Oxalis corniculata (Yellow Wood Sorrel)

Lawn Mowing Season

The first cut is the start

of the season of lawn mowing

but first put off beheading the daisies

tell yourself you like them

set the blades a notch higher

and later the same again

with creeping blue Pratias

spreading joy about the lawn

but grass here grows and grows and later

you're heard to curse the bastard lawn -

but then there's satisfaction in a clean cut,

the wifely smile so welcome.

In the dryer part of summer

you pick up leaves from cabbage trees

good for starting next winter's fires

see the effort a good form of exercise,

the weedy flowers arrive

(purple, yellow, pink)

and at the season's end

enjoy the rest that winter brings

have time to enjoy the moss of bush

the fungal growth on litter

time to make a brew

to hear the birds.

bls