Busy bee. Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. October 2011. Theme Thursday today, and they've thrown me a curveball. You see - as I bemoan in an October 2009 'classic' TT post - we down here in the Antipodes (Greek for "arse end of the world") do not partake in the "Festival of the GOURD". At least, we never used to. You see, the big supermarket chains have been trying very hard in the last couple of years to muscle in on the Halloween racket and increase the profit margin of the obesity epidemic among children. I suspect that a cabal of powerful dentists may also be in league with the sugar merchants, but I have no way of proving it. Quite how we are meant to celebrate the end of the harvest festival smack bang in the middle of spring and scare the living daylights out of impressionable old folk as the evening light stretches even longer into the night is beyond me. Moreover - much like gorging on chocolate in celebration of a baby egg-laying rabbit nail...