OCTOBER - "O HUSHED OCTOBER MORNING MILD, BEGIN THE HOURS OF THIS DAY SLOW" - ROBERT FROST
October - with two full moons in the month. And one of them due on Hallowe'en. That only happens once in a blue moon! We had perfect weather at the beginning for part of the allotment harvest - including the celery and some of the potatoes - and another fat bunch of sweet peas. The celery was good and some of it's now frozen as soup. With the addition of a little white wine and a good dollop of cream, it will be presented as part of Christmas dinner. Those sweet peas will be the last for this year - and the yet the scent was still powerful. Monty Don sows his sweet pea seeds around mid-October so that he gets an early display. I love the idea but I'm not convinced it will work in Caithness. We have some great gardens in Caithness but we really do have to battle with the conditions. When the Queen Mother bought and mended the Castle of Mey in 1952, she had the gardens planted to fit the conditions here. Having spent, in total, over twenty years creating and tending gardens …
