I had an unexpected visit from a neighbour this lunchtime. She just lives round the corner, but I only met her for the first time yesterday when I rescued her cat. Anyway, after she’d told me that ‘Precious’ was fit and well after her adventure, we went on to discuss the lovely weather and the fact that we couldn’t put off cutting the grass for much longer.

She commented that our grass looked quite short, which it is where we were standing, but it’s quite long elsewhere. The truth is, where we were standing is not actually lawn, it’s the drive, but I got so tired of weeding it that in the end I just let the grass have it’s way, and so it looks like lawn but doesn’t grow strongly, and I mow it occasionally.

Perhaps that’s the secret to reducing your grass cutting and maintenance. Ignore all the gardening books, just lay a gravel drive where you want your lawn to be and then wait for the grass to take over!

After she’d gone I cut the grass for the first time this year. When I say ‘cut the grass’, I only did the lawn in front of the house with the Flymo, but that was enough for a first go.

The smell of newly mown grass is one of my favourite smells in the whole world, and the smell of the first cut is normally even more special, so I always look forward to it, but for some reason today I couldn’t smell a thing. Perhaps I’m getting Peter’s cold.