Turf Management
A Review of the Bosch EasyRotak 32-215
Did you know that you can take a degree in Turf Management?
The University of Leicester, for example, offers a three-year course covering (among other important topics) Turfgrass Growth and Development, and Sportsturf Surface Construction and Drainage Systems.
If you had asked me yesterday what I thought about a Turf Management degree I would have given you a long-winded answer covering the Blairite push towards Higher Education for All, the apprenticeship system, and the complete devaluation of learning ‘on the job’ things that require only basic skills and a dash of common sense.
But today? SIGN ME UP.
Yup, slap my arse and send me to a 1930s suburban semi because today… I fell in love with a lawn mower.
Let’s tackle the elephant in the room, not least for the sake of my aunt - a loyal reader - who has several times suggested I might buy a lawn mower since I moved in to this very grassy part of the world and to whom I replied each time ‘I don’t want to make the investment if I’m not staying more than a few months’.
And yes. As of today, I will only have a lawn for another 57 days.
I know. It’s the stupidest and worst-timed purchase anyone has ever made, probably.
But, having just used it? Je ne regrette rien.
I am ready to take up my life as a dad-bod’d accountant named Ted, wearing a uniform of faded polo shits and ill-fitting chinos, and competing with my neighbours for a flawless striped lawn.
Ok, I admit, I am not ready for the big leagues - your Centre Court close crop, your Premier League, trampoline-spring’d, perennial ryegrass - you’d need a degree for that. But I’m ready to pull my boxy, tailored shorts up to my breast bone, crank up Radio 2, and take up my place among the lawn loons.
What am I driving? Oh, only a starter model - the Bosch EasyRotak 32-215, retailing at £79. It was the second cheapest on the lot at B&Q. The online reviews were poor but I was willing to roll the dice. Having now used it, I suspect the reviews were left by those who previously had a big lawn and used a ‘proper’ mower, but have downsized to a more sensible and manageable property in their 70s, on the urging of their middle aged children.
As a complete beginner, I give it FIVE STARS. I haven’t spent such a satisfying afternoon since I took up celibacy.
I almost immediately decided that I would leave a rug shape in the centre of the middle section of the garden, so that my garden furniture would look like it was sitting on a rug. Was it silly? Perhaps. Does it thrill me with delight? Absolutely.
I think buying the mower was a way to rage against the dying light of my time out in the countryside. It feels like an expulsion from Eden. Every moment of spring light filtering through the yellow petals of a bank of daffodils is agony. Even the briefest mention of last summer’s plums was like having my heart carved out of my chest by a toddler with a blunt hori-hori.
But I can’t leave the lawn in a terrible state when I go. It is the only part of the Barn I have really treated badly since I arrived. I’ve never had a lawn before so I had no idea how to manage it. And - as above - I resisted investing in a mower, because I kept thinking ‘I’ll have nowhere to put it when I move back to the city’.
Now, though, my plans have changed. I am going to place my new mower into storage with a few other holdovers from this blissful time at the Barn. There, the mower can await its return to glory in some future garden - a garden I now dream of daily - where once again the view will stretch for miles around, and the sun will flood through the windows unimpeded by buildings, and the British spring will announce itself as the greatest show on earth.
I cannot wait for us to be reunited in that place. But for now, we must just enjoy the time we have left together.
Takeaway: Growth and development
Hurrah for future garden. But wait, we’re mowing already? I’m not prepared…