There’s something about the word “Scarifier” (German: Ventikutierer) which seems to tell the whole story.

It is indeed a bl**dy scary experience!

You take a perfectly decent lawn (ok, pretty decent apart from a couple of patches of Daisies and the odd colony of moss), run over it with this gigantic heavy machine, ultimately turning it into the next best thing to a potato field.

I have religiously scarified (*shudder*) our garden, twice a year, since we moved in four years ago and, for reasons beyond my immediate comprehension, am still miles away from an “English Lawn”. Of course the fact that our garden is bordered by nine pine tree sure doesn’t help.

And added to that, I know hardly any lawn-owner who puts his bit of land through that bi-annual torture. Reasons include:

• Machinery too expensive to purchase
• Machinery too expensive to rent
• Machinery too heavy
• Got kids
• Got sheep
• Couldn’t care less

So, for once, I really hesitated to drag “the beast” out of the tool shed. I mean, it’s not like there really was a need for it, was there?

Wrong!

90 minutes later:

Total harvest: 200 liters of premium moss and other crap.