I like lawns, or a nice open space, to play cricket, throw a stick for the dog, sit under a shady mango tree, (the coolest spot) while watching the grandkids play tag, hide and seek, pirates and dragons, the goodies and baddies.

Hand Mowers? Great exercise for the elderly and infirm, during one of our interminable heat waves.

Valerie, what works in the old dart doesn't necessarily transfer to the antipodes. Hand mowers don't like stones and repairing reels can be really expensive? Pardon the really bad pun?

And lawns would probably still be OK, if they used recycled water exclusively!

I haven't watered my grass ever, but leave it a little long, (highest possible mower setting) to allow the overnight dew and occassional rain to soak in. And the only green yard in the street during the last drought.

Longer grass also discourages broadleaf weeds like bindi, which can be controlled by walking on them when frosted. I call it the chemical free crunch method.

During summer, I stay off the grass, given what it might be hiding or protecting.

There are plenty of electric mowers for busy folk with kids, the latter the only ones, all to often these days, with any time on their hands? And semi silent buz whirr, less unneighborly, when using the early morning cool to get the outside jobs done.
Ah, memories!

Little pot-a-roos, nibble nicely and if you follow their leavings, with a weed wiper? In a couple of years all that will remain is palatable grass never needing to be mown? Hopefully, occasionally?

Four legged mowers apparently do the job well enough for our Taswegian and Kiwi cousins.

Their calling cards can be a bit of a nuisance, unless they're vacuumed by the occassional rotary mower, with the stones and the grass, to become very useful, water saving, nutrient rich garden mulch.

That said, ground cover and paving stones work for many?
Alan B.

Bunnings have a lovely product in plastic hedge and will do a plastic swimming pool using no chlorine or pumps. Plastic labrador and gazebo with plastic wine bottles on emerald turf in mid-summer. Poms these days are rather plastic and it all uses fossil fuel. So yeah let it grow , save oil and smell the waving fields of lawn.

One of the many things that I love about Melbourne
is its greenery and parks. However, with local
councils allowing more and more high-rise buildings,
the greenery is being replaced by concrete.

Ogden Nash said it so well, many years ago when he wrote:

"I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as
a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see
a tree at all."

There's no orangutans in the palm oil trees of Borneo but there is in Trump Tower. He may be sculpted in the Black Hills of Dakota like the other Mr Presidents among the Ponderosa Pine. Or on billboards along the Great Wall among the Saguaro Cactus where he grows long and untrimmed.

FOXY, great to see you back. Hope you are well.

Valerie, careful there, people will be suing you for their injuries if you keep this up.

However as I love work, or at least watching it, so you are welcome to bring your push mower up here, to play around on my 1&1/2 acre house paddock. I even have a 80 year old motor powered cylinder mower. It does a magnificent job, if you use it after the ride on mower. It has no chance on lawn longer than an inch.

Having actually had to use an old cylinder mower on our quarter acre block as a kid, I believe any kid forced to use one today, would have a good case for cruelty against their parents. Todays kids are no where near as tough as we were.

Dear Hassie,

Thank You. It's good to be back.

Missed you.

I'm still a "work in progress," but I'm
slowly learning to cope both with my own health
issues and those of my mum's.

Thank You for caring.