Keep them peeled!

Posted on July 16, 2024 by onedeckpete

To paraphase the man like Shaw Taylor on Police Five, “Keep ’em peeled”. In this day and age people chuck out stuff with a view to someone else using it, “recycling” is what they call it. From old vacuum cleaners to 1990’s inkjet printers, people are leaving stuff out on garden walls, skips and next to rubbish bins everywhere for other people to take advantage of (if you can find the right inner bag and plug socket for the vacuum cleaner or suss out that major fault with the printer).

You can be lucky though, like we were the other day. On our daily excercise stroll we saw a few Iceland bags full of neatly pruned Irises with lovely cleaned roots that looked like they had been washed. Of course we took a bag, and why not?

A lovely space in our garden was made for them by pulling up some lemon balm by the tree that has other Irises beside them and then given a good water. Not bad for free eh? Meanwhile we have a multimeter with testing leads on the printer and still can’t find the fault. Stick to gardening freebies!

Spuds and signs

Posted on July 15, 2024 by onedeckpete

This weekend we sampled our first potato harvest after putting the Maris Piper seed spuds in the garden back in the March here. We made sure to forgot all about them this year as we usually are looking to see if the potatoes are forming not long after the plant flowers.

Even when we were being very careful with the garden fork we still punctured a few and brought up the odd green spud. Now that’s something you don’t want to ingest, the same being for the strange tomato-like fruit that sometimes form after the plant flowers. Don’t go anywhere near them!

On our travels today we found some great looking plant markers on a couple of tree seedlings around Devonshire Road SE23. They look great, very graphic. Love the baby oak one!

Number stations for the spy in a chip shop on a friday night

Posted on July 12, 2024 by onedeckpete

Thanks again to Justin Patrick Moore, this time for letting us know about this great track. Sounding like a send up of the Lincolnshire Poacher number station the wonderfully named Shropshire Number Stations brings you The Minsterley Tumbler and it’s good fun. We do hope that this doesn’t start a trend of happy sounding tunes sampling/parodying number stations as it’s all doom and gloom and the end of the world on shortwave, ain’t it?

Here’s another track that isn’t getting all serious on us when it comes to sampling off shortwave. Ax Martz brings us the upbeat Mensaje en código (Coded message).

If you do some bass heavy tripped out ravey number stations vibes, this is a good one. RAVEDEATH1993 with Number Station Dub.

00000. End of message end of transmission. Enjoy your weekend (said in a monotone robotic voice of course).

You say zuchinni, we also say courgette

Posted on July 12, 2024 by onedeckpete

It’s going absolutely crazy in the vegetable patch at Justin Patrick Moore‘s back yard in Cincinnati. Our good friend from across the pond and author of the fine book The Radio Phonics Laboratory (out now from the Peckham based Velocity Press here) has sent us some pictures of his vegetable plot. Look at the monster zuchinni plants (above) and the present harvest (below).

And as for the green beans and the corn (and the current harvest in the fridge) look at the below. It’s funny as our zuchinni (AKA courgette or baby marrow over here) and green beans didn’t get past germination stage or if they did, the “no holds barred” Forest Hill slugs had them.

Usually with zuchinni/courgettes we have a glut and there’s only so much you can do with them. There are ways around that glut though, we’ve tried this chocolate courgette cake here and here’s a great idea from Justin’s wife Audrey.

An open sandwich called Yvonne.
Put sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, and spinach, black olives if you like them, seasoned with garlic, pepper, basil and melted swiss cheese on top that you ladle over toasted bread. Add a splash of soy sauce to your taste. Sounds great for those zuchinni gluts and your own gut too.

And (above) look at this for a self-seeding/volunteer zuchinni in his garden too! What went on with our seedlings I wonder and usually our normal plants don’t even get as big as this.

And as for a tune, Justin picked this one from Tim Curry funnily enough called The zucchini song. Cheers again for the pics and recipe idea Justin and here’s more on his great book here:

On your imaginary airwaves this week

Posted on July 10, 2024 by onedeckpete

On Sunday 14th July 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations will be bringing you more summer of shortwave celebrations with COOL 3. More summer vibes and happy sunshine tunes even if though the weather outside isn’t summer-like where you live. It’s certainly don’t feel like summer here today.

Then via WRMI on Wednesday 17th July 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz they’ll be bringing you a great show in the form of Radio Ace, alas no Flash Frisbone but an array of wonderful tunes and the story of Mingling Mike. It’s a winner of a show and one well worth a listen so tune in!

The plant swap that keeps on giving

Posted on July 9, 2024 by onedeckpete

Last year we swapped a comfrey plant and got in exchange some chilli peppers, one being the apache variety (above). Last autumn we remembered what our friend DJ Phil Harmony from Berlin once said, that chillies are perenials as in they’ll keep going if they’re kept out of the frost/winter.

And below is the plant this year that’s kept on the kitchen windowsill. Do bring them in over the winter, they won’t look they are doing much but they’ll reward you again and again! Look at the amount of chillies we have on it and warning, apache is a hot one!

Bargains, bargains, bargains!

Posted on July 9, 2024 by onedeckpete

We’re always up for a bargain here at Weeds and a few weeks ago we found this great looking geranium (above) on the plant stall in a local summer sale in a church hall in Hither Green. The stall was sandwiched between a retailer of hand-made baby clothes and a vendor of grape juice from that famous grape growing region called New Cross. The geranium cost us the whopping sum of a fiver but we were happy with that as it really has come on a treat. Strange flowers as well.

This weekend we were at a local park for their annual festival. Earlier in the morning someone mentioned in reply to the horrible weather forecast for the day that “they” could be wrong, “I mean remember Michael Fish got it wrong in 1987?”, sadly “they” weren’t. It turned out to be a right washout but the sun did come out an hour before the festival was meant to close but by then it was far too late, sadly.

There was a upside to the downbeat day though when we obtained some 4 small tomato plants for £2.50 from a stall ran by the local allotment society which we didn’t notice until right at the end. Pic above: you can see the plants are pretty small in relation to the big tomato plant at the rear and the chilli pepper next to it and it is July now but you never know what may happen especially with this strange weather we’ve been having.

The comfrey liquid will be applied, a few prayers said and we’ll see. Let’s raise a glass of grape juice (preferably New Cross Nouveau) for more bargains!

Call this summer weather?

Posted on July 7, 2024 by onedeckpete

The summer seems to have subsided and today was very ropey weatherwise. Where has all the good weather gone as The Kinks once sang?

To cheer us up here’s a picture of an odd looking plant growing in the wild bit at the bottom of the garden. We did a plant ID search using identify.planet.org and it turns out it’s Greater Quaking Grass or some sort of variation of it. As it’s in with lots of other plants in the wild section of the garden, it’s hard to see the “thin stems hung with pale green flowers, which look like raindrops as they catch the light” as described on Sarah Raven’s website. Looks like a small wasps nest or a mini cocoon to us.

And to cheer us up in an audio style here’s a great tune from 2021 from 3kuad called Screen Dub.

Don’t let the bad weather grind you down!

Popcorn Double Feature later showing

Posted on July 5, 2024 by onedeckpete

Wow we didn’t even know it was a cover version! We prefer The Fall‘s interpretation but this ain’t bad though. While we’re there, we’re sticking this one below from The Fall as we love the Lee Perry original but this is great too.

One of those new fangled gramophone records