Monthly Archives: October 2019

Giving it all away

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A great thing about gardening is the passing on of stuff (whether it be it seeds, tools or plants) from one gardener to another. We don’t “give to receive” but there’s something nice about imparting something and then weeks later you get given something from someone totally unrelated. A Zen mate of ours told us this was “the universe rearranging itself”.

This week the universe has been on the rearrangement tip as the other day while going through the bag we take to work we found a folded piece of loo roll with a peg on it. “What the?” we thought as we began to unravel the mystery packet (above: packet with foxglove and lily seeds). Then we remembered a friend had given us some foxglove seeds.

On Thursday we had a workmate kindly pass on some lily seed heads (we’ve never grown lilies from seed before so any advice appreciated!) and last night a Tai Chi classmate brought in these well-healthy foxglove seedlings (below) which went in today. It now looks like we need to repay the universe for this week’s gifts. Anyone fancy some Egyptian onion sets?

 

Those lovable spiky tops

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The dahlias in the back garden are still going strong, here they are this morning before the rain fell. We’ve had a few vases worth of them this year and there’s still no sign of frosts yet. These spikey orange/red ones were originally bought as one tuber from Shannon’s. Apart from once when they were left in the ground, they were mainly dug up after the first frosts, cleaned up and put under the stairs most winters until this spring where they were divided up and put back into various areas in the garden.

A big thanks to our good mate Andy for his top gardening tips including telling us about the excellent Adam The Gardener series years ago whose top tip for dahlias is shown above. Divide your tubers and get more for your money!

And whilst looking through our old blog posts about the ‘umble dahlia we found this brilliant Earl Gateshead Big Youth podcast. Tune in and turn on!

When one door closes, another opens

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Things are coming to an end in the garden, here’s the last of the cherry tomatoes grown from seed and the potatoes where we’ve been very patient when it comes to digging them up. Look at the size of that big one, that’s a large colander by the way! Ta to Shannon’s for pointing us in the direction of the tomato seeds and the seed potatoes.

And finally the garlic we put in to overwinter. Those didn’t take long to get off to a good start. We’ll be soon saying goodbye the 2019 vegetable gardening season but it’s never too early to start planning for next year!

Everything’s gone Green

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Due to being away for a weekend, periods of bad weather and being busy with other things, it seems like it’s been ages since we were out in the garden. We go down the pond and feed the fish daily but we haven’t done much work out there for a long while. This morning the sun came out and we took the opportunity to give the newly sown lawn (up to the tree on the right) its first cut with the flymo at its highest setting.

Over a few weekends in July/August we pulled up the 1970’s crazy paving that had been there for years which was nothing but trouble what with the constant weeding we had to do to keep it tidy (pic below: the paving that was).

Suprisingly when we pulled up the paving there was just very compacted soil and a bit of sand and no hardcore as we expected. Then all we have to do was give it a good decompacting with a garden fork and repeat the process a few times.

Finally over the August Bank Holiday we popped into Shannon’s for a couple of packs of grass seeds, sowed them all, put a thin layer of soil over the top, gave it a light trample and hoped for the best and low and behold it’s now looking great! The grass was wet this morning when we cut it hence the unevenness of it and its “puppy fur” type look but it’s a 100% improvement on the paving!

Skybird on repeat

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Due to poor reception over the whole of Europe the other week, Free Radio Skybird is rebroadcasting their October edition tomorrow at 1100 UTC (12 noon UK).

Tune in using your shortwave set on 7440khz in the 41 metre band, via the SDR on Channel 292 or failing that, have a listen from locations around Germany using the SDR site here. There’s a mix from Weeds’ One Deck Pete featuring a new track from Madtone an old feature about Numbers Stations and a Delia Derbyshire Radiophonic Laboratory special.

Fingers crossed for good propagation!

#shortwavesnotdead #freeradioskybird #madtone #deliaderbyshire

We don’t want no more co-channel interference

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Here’s the studio recording of One Deck Pete’s “Sunspot minimum but the music’s maximum mix” which was transmitted on Free Radio Skybird on the 5th October 2019. (No recording off the airwaves this time due to poor quality signal and co-channel interference.)

Tracklistings:
Froth Whitlam – “Sheeba”
Dasya – “Tango on the Street”
Andre J Kwenda – “Umbali”
Madtone – “Diamond in the sky” first worldwide play on shortwave radio.

And if you’re longing to hear a bit of distorted audio here’s what Madtone’s “Diamond in the sky” sounded like recorded off an online SDR in Carlow, Ireland. Additional percussion thanks to co-channel interference from Radio China International and fades and noise courtesy of the E and F layers of the Ionosphere.

Genuine Thursday night tune

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As heard on last week’s excellent On The Wire show on BBC Radio Lancashire. Lloyd Ruddock with the excellent Roy Cousins produced “Genuine Way” with the lovely flip, Ungena, a dub by his brother the late great King Tubby. Cheers Stevie B for letting us know about this one and for Fenny for telling us about finding a genuine stone-age axe head! Here it is in all it’s glory on the On The Wire website! It’ll be passed onto a museum for safe keeping but what a find!

Saturday night’s radio today

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https://soundcloud.com/djfrederick/free-radio-skybird-5-october-2019

Here’s an advance on  Free Radio Skybird‘s Saturday 5th October at 2200 UTC/ 2300 UK transmission on 6070 khz on shortwave if you want to hear it now and without the sounds of the ionosphere.

This month’s programme features One Deck Pete’s “Sunspot Minimum but the Music’s maximum” mix at 11.22 in, at 22.01 Justin Patrick Moore’s Radiophonic Laboratory which is an excellent special on Delia Derbyshire (cheers also to Justin to pointing us to this great Delia Derbyshire resource here), a rerun of a Numbers Stations special at 34.47 featuring Akin Fernandez and Simon Mason and at 42.35 One Deck Pete again with the Skybird Mailbag. 

“Solar minimum but the music’s maximum” mix has tunes from: Froth Whitlam, Dasya, Andre J Kwenda and a worldwide exclusive from Madtone with Diamond in the sky.

Big thanks to DJ Frederick for getting us involved in the Skybird project and a big shout to everyone else involved (Justin & Steve). Tune in and drop out (now or later)! #Shortwavesnotdead #Freeradioskybird