First Frost

Got up this morning and it felt cold and then walking to the station on the way into work I noticed the Valence way field was covered in a heavy frost on the shaded side of the field. The rest of the field what with being in the sun already was OK. But that obviously means the grass seeds that I've sown when I did the last batch of top dressing is likely to survive unless there's a change in the weather over the next 4 or 5 weeks. What it will mean is that I'll probably not sow any more seed now until the spring.

Today's my short day so I came home early and noted again (I think this happened last week too) that the gate to the field was open and yet no-one was on the field. I think the key holder opens the gate early in the day so that the Boxing club blokes can get in there at 5.30pm? The thing is it's a perfect opportunity for me to simply drive in there in my car and drive back and forth up the wicket using my car as a roller a few times! I reckon I may be tempted in the spring if this arrangement continues all year, but for the moment with football being played on the pitch over the next few months I'll try and refrain from doing this!

I had a look at the wicket and it's almost invisible now apart from maybe the grass is a bit greener. With it on the verge of totally disappearing I went back over later and marked it out again and took some photo's of it from the end of the field looking down the centre, so hopefully I'll be able to mow more or less the exact patch of grass next spring?

You can just make out in the top picture the shape of where the wicket was, the grass as mentioned being slightly greener.

The weather over the next few days is going to be windy and changeable with 2 fronts bringing rain twice before the weekend is over. Saturday sounds as though it's going to be bright in the morning and then rain later and then Sunday's going to be sunny. The temp because of the wind and rain is going to be fairly good - daytime temps of 16 degrees centigrade and 8 degrees at night, so that means the grass will have a good chance to grow and and maybe the grass seeds germinate? Another observation was that the top dressing has been absorbed into the grass/earth very quickly, so I'll put more down on Friday or early Saturday so that the rain will wash it in.

Other stuff - I noticed that Slazenger make some weird pink plastic cricket balls that are good for kids to practice with. We use Kookaburra ones at the minute because of all the plastic balls these are the heaviest and therefore the nearest approximation when bowling to throwing a cricket ball. These pink ones look interesting though and I may buy a couple, just to see how they perform?