LIZ FIELDING

CUTTING THE GRASS...

I have large swathes of grass that I both love and loathe. It looks fabulous when I've just cut it and it is the only exercise I take so is Good for me. But I always view the coming of winter with a sense of relief that I can put away the mower for six months and forget about it. But once in a while life on the lawn can get exciting. The dh looked out of the bedroom window the other day and said the dread words. The cows have got in.

We live in farming country and our land backs onto a field and we have cattle for neighbours. Sometimes cows with their calves, which I always love to see. But the calves grow up to be frisky young bullocks and they are a pest, always desperate to break through the fence and get at the lush stuff - because as we know, the grass is always greener on the other side. A quick phone call to the farm - there have been occasions in the past where they've leapt the front wall and gone galloping off down the road.

This time, they returned to the field without too uch fuss, but not before they ate the top of a rowan tree I've been nurturing for three years - it will survive but it's not going to be an elegant tree.

And my lawn - not of the bowling green variety, admittedly, but on which much sweat is expended every week in the summer - is now full of holes.