The year

Four weathers, one lawn

A Sharon lawn does not have a European spring. It has a hamsin, a first rain, a winter that is either rest or ryegrass, and a summer that shows who watered.

The desk plans the week from four weathers, not from a poster of twelve equal months. Bermuda and kikuyu keep their own clocks. The olive drops leaves when it is ready. The irrigation controller, left alone, keeps July in its memory until someone changes it. This page is that change, written down.

Hamsin

The hamsin, the sharav, is a hot dry wind off the desert. On the coastal plain it comes hardest in late spring, often April into May, and it can return in autumn. Lawns grey at the tips by afternoon. The soil crusts. A hedge that was cut the day before shows every pale wound.

On a hamsin day we mow in the morning, and we raise the height one notch rather than shave a stressed sward. We look at whether the irrigation actually ran the night before. We do not spread fertiliser into that wind. A feed belongs on a mild day, on turf that is growing, at the rate on the bag. If the only slot left is the hot afternoon, we move the visit. Friday work already ends at noon; a hamsin Friday is not the day to start a large lawn at eleven.

Do not feed a lawn that is busy surviving the wind.

Calendar, hamsin

First rain

The yoreh, the first real rain, usually arrives between October and November. This issue is dated 29 October 2026, inside that window. One night of rain on a summer clock does three things at once. It mats the olive and ficus leaves onto the turf. It fills a drain grate that nobody lifted in August. It makes a controller set to forty minutes a night into a second, unwanted rain.

The job then is the leaf and first-rain cleanup on the Grounds list: leaves lifted, mats off the grass, paths swept, grates cleared. The irrigation check that belongs with it is mostly subtraction. Shorten the minutes. Turn off stations that wet a bed the rain has already soaked. We write down what we changed. We do not rebuild the system because the season turned.

Winter growth

December through February is not one thing. Hybrid Bermuda goes tawny and rests unless someone overseeded it with ryegrass in autumn. Kikuyu slows and sulks, and on a Sharon villa it often stays greener than the books imply, especially if the winter is mild. Cool-season weeds enjoy the rain. Fungus enjoys a lawn that was scalped and then left wet.

Where the turf is dormant Bermuda, we lengthen the interval to two or three weeks, or we stop until it wakes. We do not put a heavy nitrogen feed on straw and call it care. Where ryegrass was overseeded and is actually growing, a light feed at the labeled rate is reasonable, and the mower still has work. We do not cut sodden ground. A stripe pressed into mud is a rut, and ruts outlast the rain.

Hedges slow. A ficus face in January is a tidy, not a renovation. Citrus gets a light shaping if it needs one, not a hard hack because the diary said “winter prune.” Olive suckers at the base can come off. Structural cuts on old olives are a conversation, not a line on a list.

Summer browning

June through August is when people send a photograph of a brown lawn and ask for a tonic. Sometimes the lawn is Bermuda that is short of water, cut too low, or simply a cultivar at the edge of what it will do in a Pituach afternoon. Sometimes it is ryegrass that was sown for winter and is bowing out, which is what ryegrass does when the heat arrives. Sometimes it is kikuyu, which should still be green and hungry, and needs the weekly cut rather than a product.

We mow higher in a heat week. We will say if the brown is seasonal and not ours to paint. We do not dye turf, and we do not sell a spray that “brings it back by Friday.” If the controller is the problem, the irrigation check is the honest job. If a licensed pest controller is the right trade, we stop there. Summer browning is a diagnosis first. The mower is not a dye.

Through the growing peak — late spring into early autumn for Bermuda and kikuyu — a standing weekly visit is the right interval for a villa that wants stripes. Book it on the Book page. The desk confirms the day. A note alone does not hold it.