Monthly Archives: December 2020

Fingers numb and faces aglow

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There was a little bit of sunshine today in Forest Hill but it was bitterly cold as we brought the potato and brussels sprouts peelings down to the compost heap. There’s some sort of storm a brewing tomorrow evening we’ve been told too. That’s all we need.

Have a good festive season! May the Bailey’s be a flowing and there’s no end of turkey sarnies on white bread for the time being (until you get bored of them). May the spring come around soon and things get back to some sort of new normal in the very near future.

We don’t like to give it large…

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A big thanks to Medwyn’s of Anglesey for sending us a trial seed pack of the “longest leek”! The company specialises in some great prize winning vegetables that have won medals at Chelsea and the like. Exhibiting vegetables is well out of our league and don’t really interest us here but we’re going to give them leeks a go in the spring and will keep you posted on their progress.

How do people out there feel about long leeks, parsnips the length of a golf putter and onions the size of footballs? What we wonder is, when they’ve been grown to an expanded size, do they actually still taste nice? We’d love to know!

‘ere? ‘ave you seen me Solstice?

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Happy Solstice to one and all! Think of today as “The beginning of winter’s death” (Den Ming Dao, 365 Tao #355 Winter) rather than the grey, drizzly day stuck in lockdown again, the Monday before Christmas 2020 it really is.

We are presently keeping ourselves amused by watching the replay of the Stonehenge Winter Solstice stream here on youtube where at the moment there’s a bunch of security guards in high visibility vests congregating in the upper right hand corner either having their own celebration or standing around a calor gas heater.

Big shout to all our gardening and music mates worldwide and remember, from today the days will be getting longer and the sunny days are on their way (well we can dream can’t we?)

Holding back the tiers

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We go up another tier level this week, how are we going to cope with another lockdown? You can’t really go out in the garden as it’s a bit wet even though there’s been some warmer weather promised later this week. One job we will do is to get some gnat-free herb plants going on the kitchen windowsill after a summer of constant clouds of fungus gnats on our old pots. We’ve watered from the bottom and put up sticky traps and now going to admit defeat and starting again from scratch. More about the gnats and how to protect against them here.

We took some advice from the folks at Shannon’s and bought some indoor houseplant potting mix which should be free of any gnat’s eggs, put the old plants outside and give the actual pots a good clean with some disinfectant and then rinsed them through a few times for luck. It’s a bit early to be sowing anything really serious but we may start off a bit of basil (above: a few packs of seeds bought off ebay the other week) off in a pot with a see-through plastic bag on the top as a temporary greenhouse. As soon as the seeds show signs of propagation we’ll take the plastic off as to stop any damping off occurring.

Next summer we may be experiencing “a new normal” in the kitchen (ie. without clouds of gnats flying about or those sticky traps that don’t look too nice with lots of dead flies on them!)

Pigeons have a voracious appetite for brassicas

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A big shout to Jon and George of the excellent Coughing Pigeon Radio Show on Brum Radio that plays “Not just sounds from across THE spectrum, but sounds from across EVERY spectrum” as the Brum Radio website desribes the show and they’re not wrong there!

On last week’s show they played at 19 minutes in Jazz’min & Madtone’s “Return to the branches” and at 42 minutes Stefanosis with Remembering Augustus off the great FREE Echo Chamber – Around the World in Dub Volume 11/12 on Dan Dada Records available here. Cheers Jon for plugging the compilation! Give Coughing Pigeon a listen if you’re looking for a great cross-genre listening experience!

Punk Rock That’s Yer Lot!

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We’re not usually one’s for punk rock nostalgia here (there is some punk rock nostalgia here by the way) but we picked up this fanzine on ebay the other day for just over a tenner. It was something we can remember from the time it was featured in an NME feature on fanzines around 1977/78 and the cover image has always stayed in our memory.

We love a good fanzine here as you know and this is an excellent example of one (this one features The Clash, Sex Pistols live at Notre Dame Hall plus an interview with Howard from The Adverts and lots more) especially with an article entitled Music Papers… Will they ever take over from fanzines?

But we were very shocked at the hostility aimed at its readers from its editors (below) as “It’s just not cricket” as they say. We’d also love to know the relevance of the “Any of you xxxxers want to become film stars and/or lend equipment. Ring Rough Trade and leave a message”. Wonder what’s that about? And shock horror the Roxy is playing funk and heavy rock, gawd help us…

And on that note we will drink some more cans of strong lager, (try to) do the punk kicking dance and then go to bed feeling sick at 9pm. Punk Rock that’s yer lot! #gardeningsnotdead #shortwaveradiosnotdead

The weather it is a-changin’

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Wow, it’s December can you believe? No wonder it’s freezing out there and the rest of the week looks like it’s going to be getting colder. We’ve heard from our gardening pals in Cincinnati  (Cheers Justin!) and Freiberg, Germany (Cheers Jazz’min) where they’ve had their first dusting of snow so I doubt it won’t be long until we’ll get some.

Those dahlias were still looking fine last weekend but we reckon it won’t be long till the frost comes and blackens the plants when it will be time again to dig them all up and stick them somewhere frost free and dry for the rest of the winter, keeping an eye out for any rotting or mouldy tubers while they’re in storage.

We can’t complain as those spikey orange ones have been great this year, flowering right up until we last looked so going to the effort of digging them up and storing them indoors is a small price to pay for a few more years of the same.

And the nice plastic looking pink variety we were given this year was great too (cheers Marc).

And the beds in front of the Dad corner (that has been productive this year thanks to the new raised beds) have been tidied up a bit and now ready for the winter. In the pic you will notice a couple of cabbage stalks that we left when we cut the leaves off them. Not sure if it will happen over the winter but usually when you cut them off like that, the leaves grow back again. Value for money or what?