Cutting Edge
The other day I treated myself to a nice new pair of lawn edging shears from a well-know catalogue outlet shop. Super-light, brushed aluminium handles, with a definite "snip!" when operated. Oh yes these s shears are The Business, and I set about edging the lawn like I invented them. The edging looked great and makes such a difference to the overall look of the lawn (even though the circumference of the lawn is probably 10% smaller now as I got carried away a bit).
The question is, do I do the job properly, and go back around and pick up all the snippings? Or do I do what I normally do, and hope they blow away? Well it wasn't raining and I couldn't think of an excuse, and anyway I wanted to justify the expense of the new shears (£12.95- I'm no skinflint). So I picked up all the snippings - a whole barrow-full - and stood back to admire my handywork. It's just a shame that the whole thing will need to be done again in two weeks time.
So I got thinking about another lawn for which I had solved this problem, some time ago. I had access to quite a few wooden transport pallets and was amazed by how good some of the timber was on some of them. I got hold of a crowbar and hammer and dismantled some of the pallets. Now this was quite difficult at first, but after a bit of experimentation I was able to get a method together where I could break one up in a couple of minutes.
This left me with a lot of long strips of wood about five inches wide and over a meter long. I doubled the thickness by putting two together with nails, but offset so I could add another and another to make a really long double-thickness length. The off-setting meant the timber stayed nice and straight and I made them up to about six meters long. I made several of these lengths.
Then it was just a case of setting them into the ground along the lawn edge. I made some pegs out of smaller off-cuts to secure them upright. Hey presto, super straight wooden lawn edging that looks great and should last for ages, made from recycled materials. And the mower cuts right above them, so no edging required!
