Working on our practice wicket in the Paddock

This morning I heard the familiar sound of the council mowing the grass verges and potentially the paddock. So after breakfast I wandered across the road to check to see if they'd cut the grass on our wicket. I've been holding back on seeding it because I guessed that they'd churn up all the grass.  Sure enough what with the wet and cold start to Spring this year and the use of a dirty great sit-on tractor mower like this here...

The paddock got pretty churned up including the bit I worked on a couple of weeks ago. So this morning it looked like this...

This shot here would be the view from the batsman.

This view here is almost side on - we bat at the end here on the extreme right of this image.

Looking at it more closely, it was obvious that the damage wasn't that severe and that with a little rolling it was going to easily rectified. 

The soil is very wet and the temp today was 13 centigrade, so idea for sowing the seeds. I've bought 2 types, one for under the trees in the shady area and a general hard-wearing grass for the bit that has the sun on it all day. So I've mixed them together, with more of the shady version under the trees.

 Here's all my gear ready to go.

 This is with the seed put down prior to a proper roll, you can see on one side where I've started.

 Here I've covered the seed with fine grade dressing made up of general compost and clay.

 Then before rolling I've covered the cut strip/wicket area with scaffold netting, so that the clay doesn't stick to the roller lifting all of the seeds.

This is it once it was rolled and some additional loose top-dressing in areas that needed to be filled because of shallow dents. You can see in the distance the roller at the bowlers end as some work was done in the bowlers foot-marks. Usually we only cut the batting end, but looking at it today I might cut a full 22 yards this summer as it look pretty flat.

Hopefully, no-one will vandalise it and the grass will establish quickly. Rains expected in the next 24 hours mixed with sunshine in between (April showers). The latter part of the week it's going to get warmer and the following week traditional April showers so wet and warm. The prospect therefore looks good. As the grass establishes, I'll get some grass food of some sort to help it flourish and hopefully we'll get some good use out of it through the summer.