Frugal Christmas tree
Christmas branch
Rather than buy a tree this year, we headed out into the woods to pick out own. It would have been wrong to hack one down, of course, so we walked through the trees until we found a pile of cut branches drying by the path, and dragged one home.
It’s spent the last couple of weeks planted in a pot full of gravel, arching gracefully over the TV. No watering, no needle drop, no temptation for the cat to climb up it and make a home in the upper branches. It’s been the perfect Christmas companion.
Things we’ve learnt this year from our first attempt:
- Find a slender branch with a good curve to it so you have plenty of horizontal – or nearly horizontal – wood on which to hang your decorations.
- Don’t pick anything too thick, as no matter how sturdy your base its natural tendency will be to lay flat on the floor. If you do, you’ll spend most of your Christmas propping it up.
- Low-key decorations work best. Avoid too much sparkle and glamour and get rich deep tones and non-reflective surfaces to complement the wood.
- Fewer lights is better. We had 80 on our branch, and it was about 30 too many. If we were starting from scratch again next year I’d look for 50 lights or fewer.
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The strawberries have been our big success story this summer. Surprising, really, as they have been a dead loss in years gone by.
May saw a slight fall in the number of eggs laid by our three hens. That was unexpected, but there are some possible explanations.
A flapjack in essence, this is very quick and easy to bake and uses store cupboard ingredients, so you can keep stocked up on everything you need and make a new batch whenever you want some.
The apricot tree is looking distinctly sorry for itself and now, with a gust of wind, it’s lost two of its only four fruits.
We had a very good demonstration of why it’s worth growing your own this week, even when vegetables are so cheap in the shops at the moment. Here it is.
