The calves have massacred our fledgling apple trees and this week deployed their enormous pink tongues to a more festive prey: our raggedy pine-trees that had dared to spread over the dyke to within reach of these baby assassins.
I’m all for foraging and making the best use of this rough piece of west coast land, but Dr Google has proven a bit ambiguous as to the health benefits of munching down on this jaggy snack. So, I donned a slightly smelly pair of wetsuit gloves (the nearest thing I could find to gardening apparel), grabbed the secateurs and launched my own attack on the fir trees’ lower branches.
With three pairs of stumpy wee calf-horns prodding me encouragingly as I gathered a vast spiky pile, there was no hanging around. The girls’ forbidden fruit is now safely out of bounds, unless they intend to scale the stone wall to reach their indelicate delicacy – and I seriously wouldn’t put it past them.
Seeing as we’re still gaily bashing on with the self-sufficiency mission, we heaved the lopped branches into the house and decided to deck the halls with the confiscated contraband.
A quick glance at a Pinterest garland-making tutorial was all it took: ‘First you want to find your midpoint, using 24 gauge wire, twist that connection piece and then create a loop…’ I hollered upstairs to our eldest.
‘Fancy a really fun craft-night?’
A short break from her studies and she could whip up a garland for the staircase – no bother. Generously allowing her the lead role in constructing what Pinterest assured me would be a ‘breathtaking centerpiece to our holiday season’, I sat on the living room floor and cut the unwieldy branches into manageable chunks while she sacrificed her fingers and patience to the painful task of assembling copper wire and prickly branches into something very long and pretty.
Three days later we were still sitting on the living-room floor, pine needles in most of our bodily nooks and crannies wishing we’d left the calves to feast on the damned things.
This should have been no surprise to me. My cack-handedness with all things crafty is legendary.
My mother actually cried trying to teach me to knit. Not even an inch of scarf could I achieve throughout my entire childhood.
She, who made all our clothes on her trusty Singer, suggested I sew some clothes for my dolls, then after watching my attempts in horror, handed me a stapler, which actually worked pretty well. Decades later, I have to confess that there might have been some basic office equipment involved when I was forced to fashion a costume for our first-born’s dancing display. I had had no idea that the mere fact of having given birth to a kid who liked a bit of tap and modern came with such terrifying demands. Worse was to come when she added ballet to her repertoire. How in God’s name are you supposed to do those tight little hair buns? Having graced the 80s with a haircut veering dangerously between a Lady Di flick and a Sheena Easton mullet, I have never done pigtails far less French plaits or that disturbing ballet bun.
I soon discovered there’s always a supermum watching from the wings, happy to soar in and save your poor little wretch from the shame of going onstage looking more like a scraggy cockerel than a dying swan.
Now, the tables have turned and the same daughter has rescued me from a mess of festive-fir and has created something pretty decent for our bannister.
She should be tap dancing down the stairs Ginger Rodgers-style after all those sequin-clad lessons, but her bedroom door is firmly shut, her air-pods are in and she is determinedly ignoring her mother’s suggestion that we fashion something festive outside. There’s a stack of unadorned hay bales just asking for fairylights and baubles, a wooden shelter yearning to be turned into a cute little nativity scene… and a mother who should just settle down with a slab of chocolate and a vat of mulled wine. Here’s hoping no one confiscates my own wee bit of festive contraband.
The Softer Crofter 