The banks were turfed getting on for two years ago (see reference 1) and have looked OK, but they were not looking OK on this occasion. Now I have never seen people running up and down the banks, even when the place is busy, so I don't put their condition down to that. Rather that, if you turf steep banks like these, then strim them down close in dry weather, the grass is going to snuff it. Maybe the grass never put much of the way of roots down into the clay under the turfs. Perhaps the skate park contractors knew all about the slide & ramp side of things but were not so hot when it came to grass. Will the grass come back or will the banks just gradually wash away?
Maybe they should have got a grass consultant in from Wisley who could have told them about what grass to use. Rather harder would be trying to tell the grass mowing contractor to calm his strimmers down a bit. I associated to the prophecies of doom of my childhood to the effect that if you strip all the decent people out of the working class with education & opportunities, what is left is going to be rather a rough lot, unconstrained by the presence of decent & intelligent elders. The sort of elders who were still around in my days on building sites; they might have been labourers, classified as unskilled by the Ministry of Labour of the time, but they were decent, highly skilled, hard working and they knew a lot about the world and the people in it. A problem which the Indians used to avoid with their caste system: it didn't matter how good you were, if you were born into a bricklaying family or a grave digging family that is what you did. And a problem to which I do not see any easy solution - beyond the process and procedure which dominate many once pleasant walks of life.
I also associated to the gang of strimmers I saw working on the anti-gypsy banks on the other side of Horton Lane, around gmaps 51.338134, -0.293141. The banks were overgrown with tall, rank weeds and I am sure that it was taking a lot longer to strim them down than it would have taken with a scythe, or even a sickle. But maybe, brought up on Xbox rather the physical jerks, the strimmer operators would not be able to swing a scythe for more than a few minutes at a time, assuming, that is, that one cared to trust them with such things at all.
Exiting the park, I came across some strange leaves, but I shall leave them for the next post.
And then, back in Manor Green Road there was more grass. Grass which had been sown a couple of weeks or so ago in the front garden of a house which has just been more or less rebuilt. Sown when it was hot & dry and which has done well, despite my dismal expectations. A bit thin yet and with something of a bare patch in the middle, but doing pretty well, maybe a couple of inches high now. They have been lucky with the weather as it turned out and they have helped their luck along with regular watering. Hopefully the Poles on this case do not know about strimmers and it will look like a lawn by the autumn.
PS: the google maps satellite picture at 51.338134, -0.293141 shows a lot of rectangles rather than a banked field. Are these rectangles the traces of allotments of former times, perhaps war time endeavours to grow more grub? Occupational therapy for mental patients? Or is it something much more recent and banal like land drains? Or are they laying out some new allotments for the inhabitants of the new estates? Now I come to think about it, they have been doing something with lots of little marker posts in the field in question. When did google take their picture? A closer look is clearly called for in the margins of the next blackberry hunt.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/inspection-day.html.
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