It turns out that my tiny, tiny flat comes with a tiny, tiny garden, and according to the latest management inspection, I’m supposed to be looking after it. Oops. So I’ve been given two weeks to whip it into something resembling shape, after approximately a year of total neglect.

I first had to go to the hardware shop, as my strimmer had run out of strim. Several quite sturdy long-stemmed things had taken up residence, and mower-power wasn’t going to be enough to deal with them.

While there, I had a look at various noxious chemicals that are supposed to help one with one’s lawn, somehow magically killing weeds yet leaving the grass untouched. I didn’t get any of them, though, as they all had dire warnings about not using any clippings for mulching or composting, or even putting them into the Council “garden waste” bins. On the one hand, I vaguely like the idea of going “organic”, at least on my lawn; on the other, I need to have it looking as good as I can in just two weeks. I’ve got a couple of days to decide though, as you’re meant to apply it three days after mowing.

All in all, I did two passes with the mower, bringing in the strimmer for the tougher vegetation when required. The strimmer was a pain though; the string kept breaking off and not replenishing itself automatically like it’s supposed to. Possibly I reloaded the thing wrong, but it was still irritating having to stop and start all the time. I got there in the end, even if I did entirely fill up the Council gardening bin in the process…

Anyhoo, I thought I’d document the process with some before and after shots, taken on my camera phone. That was easy enough, but getting the photos off my phone and onto the computer and thus onto flickr.com was beyond ridiculous. Motorola, the makers of my phone, do have a connection kit. However, it’s always been flaky about whether or not it will deign not notice the phone, despite being connected with a proper Motorola USB cable. This time it decided to pretend it knew the phone was connected, until I actually went to the file manager to transfer files. Only then would it start going on about “processing failed” and “no connection” and “Phone? What phone?”

I do so love technology.

In the end, I found out it had an update option, so I started updating the software – all that really seemed to do was trigger more updates, which in turn triggered more updates, and further updates… I think I’ve gone up two versions and finally, after a reboot and a recharge and reinstalling the modem drivers and getting the software to find the modem from scratch again, I got the nice new spiffy version 4 Multimedia Studio to actually give up the photos.

Stones and blood ain’t in it.

Anyway, after all that, I got them all up on a flickr.com photoset, so you can enjoy the fruits of my hard labour.