Our garden is sufficiently large that one year we thought we'd turn part of our largest lawn over to meadow. That is to say, we'd stop mowing the section that has the fruit trees, sow and transplant some wild flowers into it and cut it annually with a scythe. We researched the theory and embarked on the project. It turned out that the maintenance of this area of grass was, if not more time-consuming than lawn, certainly harder work when it came to looking after it. The effect in spring and summer was fine, but the appearance after the mowing wasn't good and the disposal of the grass was harder than envisaged. Moreover, some flowers in the meadow succeeded but quite a few failed. So we decided to drastically reduce the area of "meadow", return a big portion back to lawn and see how that fared. The answer was, much better, even though I was back to steering the mower round most of the apple and pear trees once more.
Today's photograph shows some of the grasses in our small area of meadow lit by June sunshine I expect I'll be photographing the dog daisies in it soon, and enjoying the sight of the long grass and flowers swaying in the breeze and July sunshine before I take the scythe to it.
photograph and text © Tony Boughen
Photo Title: Meadow Grasses
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 35mm Macro (70mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
