And so it has arrived, my new toy for boys as my guest so kindly puts it. It is wicked. You just stick it into the frigana bush and with a pole long enough to keep you out of harm’s way should any wildlife leap out, off it goes. You swing it too and fro and the stalks are cut back to the base with violence and speed.
The next job is for my guest to rake them away and apply poison to the stems to kill the roots. As an added bonus I gather that the poison also works on reducing all sorts of local wildlife diversity.
Mindful of that diversity, for the really big bushes which can be four of five yards cubed we have decided to cut away an opening belt of a yard all round, rake away the detritus and apply poison. Ay wildlife will thus get the message and move on before we eat into another yard the next day and so on until each bush is eliminated.
It is actually quite heavy my new toy and after a fifteen minute scything session in the late afternoon sun – which I should note was preceded by a good run to the spring and back – I was somewhat of a sweaty wreck albeit resplendent in my Mark Steyn T-shirt. Tomorrow afternoon we have pledged to do a long session the fields. The era of the frigana is drawing to a close.
