Bog Myrtle & Peat

Home, Parish of Kirkgunzeon – 20/4/20

Grass seed is so light that it swirls in the wind. It’s designed to blow around and disperse, but that lightness leaves it ill-suited to sowing from a broadcaster. A Northerly breeze has come down from Moniaive and the Shinnel for a week, and if I tried to sow grass now it would splay and tumble in the wind. A good sowing leaves the crop to lie evenly, but this wind would play silly buggers and the seed would tumble in eddies and cracks along the field margins.

At times like this, they say you should sow grass at dawn when the wind drops and the air is still enough for an even spread. But I’ve been up at five since Easter, and the dew’s so heavy that another problem arises. Grass seed is light and flossy and it sticks in the dew. So I would sow the grass in perfect stillness and when I came to roll it flat, the seed would gum to the roller and come up in clods.

Instead, I sit and wait for my chance to sow the summer grass, trying to ignore the dryness and the cracked sod. Swallows course in the yard, and now there is a cuckoo on the moss. He is the first of the season, but he works at half strength in the wind and the chill of early morning.