The house in the Yorkshire Dales that I moved to this year has a lawn. This is quite a change for me because my previous cottage on the North York Moors was in the middle of a village and only had a stone flag patio at the front, and a small paved yard at the back.

The patio was fine for pots. I grew peas and beans that scrambled over the railings by the road and which I could harvest when needed; and some pots with scented plants. One with the shrub Viburnum bodnantense and another with a group of Royal Lilies. This suited me very well as I had to travel a lot for work and maintaining a garden was not really possible.

In my new Dales house with a lawn I didn’t cut the grass for no-mow-May, but did make some paths through it which I broadened in June to create some areas of traditional short-grass lawn. The rest I left as meadow and was rewarded by a charm of goldfinches feeding on seed heads, and rustling hedgehogs snuffling their way through the long grass in search of worms and beetles.

The hay meadows around my house have been cut now, so I thought it was time to finally mow my own lawn meadow. I set the lawn mower on the highest setting and worked my way gradually through it in narrow strips until it was done.

I think I’ll keep the patches of meadow with strips of short-grass lawn and see if I can get some more meadow plants to grow. Some early spotted orchids would be nice if I can find some to buy from a good nursery. One of the joys of not mowing, in addition to the wildlife attracted, were the many different species of wild flower that emerged and I’d like to add to the mix.

It was just an ordinary patch of lawn when I moved in, but there were all sorts of flowers hidden amongst the tightly cropped grass. Buttercups, clover, vetches, oxeye daisy, betony, birdsfoot trefoil, and many different types of grasses.

That of course got me thinking, and without wanting to push the analogy too much, I have been finding it interesting to see what has been growing up in the previously tightly mown lawn of my own thoughts and memory.

A busy and demanding job, needs of children, controlling parents and spouse, all serve to keep the wild meadow flowers tightly clipped and suitable for walking on. As I’ve eased off on work by going part-time and settled into a new life in the Dales, all sorts has been emerging.

I have very vivid dreams. Sometimes when I wake it is hard to tell dream from reality and I have to be careful about keeping actual events separate from the re-constituted dream world. They are not nightmares or magical realism, just an alternative resorting and connecting of ordinary events with new twists of interpretation and outcomes.

Does anyone else have vivid dreams that leave you wondering what is dream-world and what is reality? I find them fascinating. 

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member