Monthly Archives: April 2021

Locking stable doors after horses bolted

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Yesterday was a funny old day, cold with a bit of sunshine and then in the late afternoon a very light slurry of snow! Crazy eh, but then again it’s only the first week of April.

This morning there was a light frost on the grass, thank God we put out the teepees of old fabric as protection yesterday afternoon. Walking back into the house we thought of the site someone told us about a few years ago that has a frost predictor of sorts. Just go here, tap in your location and it’ll give you a rough estimate of when you can expect the last frost but then again it’s no guarantee so our fabric teepees are going to be on hand for a few weeks yet!

And talking of stables here’s a couple of tunes that’s just came to mind. The Billy Hope version even has a sort of “Steptoe and Son” vibe at the start (very in keeping with the horses theme!)

So the neighbours think we’ve gone mad again

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So it’s been another nice day with some sunshine here in London but there’s reports of snow and Arctic conditions up north this afternoon. It may have been nice in the sunshine but when you walked out of the sun it weren’t half nippy!

The forecast tonight is for possible frost so we got out the protection for some newly planted shrubs in the form of old bits of fabric flung around a trio of small bamboo canes in a tent formation. We’ve made sure the cloth don’t touch the leaves, there’s no gaps where the cold can get into and a few stones at the bottom to anchor it down. We can only hope for the best!

Lidl and soul

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We made a nice purchase from the centre aisle of Lidl this week, another Clematis Montana (Cheers to Nancy B for the original recommendation a couple of years ago). It went in yesterday with a good bit of water. Let’s hope it can stand the weather over Monday and Tuesday next week where it may be down to minus 1! It would be very nice to think that the variety was named after the great Vincent Montana too, you never know.

And talking of of soul and good vibes KSOL “The sound of sunshine and soul on shortwave” takes to the airwaves in a couple of weeks time on 9670 kHz at 1500 UTC (2pm UK time) on Sunday April 18th and repeated on April 25th 2021. There’s a mix by One Deck Pete called “A bit of sunshine and soul” which’ll feature tunes by Jackie Lee & Delores Hall, Cat Stevens, George McCrae, Carl Bean and Love Unlimited. Tune in for some so(u)lar warmth and after next week we reckon we’ll be needing some! #soulonshortwave #shortwavesnotdead

And now they’ve told us it’ll snow

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We’ve made a good start on the garden over the last couple of days, it’s had a good bit of tidying up, some seeds were sown and even a few chitted seed potatoes have gone into the raised beds with the handmade potection on the top. Typically we’ve been told we may be having wintery conditions over the next week. No worries then, it’ll be a mad dash out with the newspaper and old net curtains if anything looks like it’ll be needing protection.

At the bottom of the garden it’s a little darker now due to the fence going up so we’re in the process of tidying it up and seeing what can go in. The cardoons are coming on well and there’s some red onions that never done much last year that have now resprouted so we’re leaving them in for a bit.

We’ve still got more packs of seeds to sow but we reckon we’ll hold onto them for a while. We didn’t do too well with green beans last year so this year trying a new variety to us called Python, a french climbing bean. Years ago the great Joe Maiden mentioned that runner beans in general don’t like sitting around in cold soil so we’re not going to sow them till mid/late May when the soil is warmer. Was it Joe who also passed on the tip that you know when you it’s the right time to sow seeds outdoors as it’s when you put your hand into the soil and it feels pleasant not cold. It may have been. So wait a while until you sow outdoors (unlike us who have already started!)