IT is not in my nature to be the purveyor of doom and gloom. I am a dyed-in-the-wool optimist. Gardeners, we are told, differ from farmers in that they always think next year will be better; farmers know it will be worse. For both cultivators of the earth, there were lessons learned over the past 12 months—not all of them positive.
The most salutary was that cold snap in December of 2022. In Braemar, Aberdeenshire, for