Mrs Down's Diary

It is certainly not a feature of ours, particularly at Christmas time , when the choice of tree presents even more of a contentious issue for discussion than normal family discourse.

For many years we picked otu a tree from Christmas trees that John had dug in among plantations of hard woods created around the farm.

He must have planted several thousand trees over the years and now they provide a warm winter retreat and shelter for wildlife.

However the Christmas trees have either grown too big to bring into the house or are too straggly after being crowded out and stunted by bigger trees around them.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette December 19