Cheers to Rich R for sending us this and to Daphne for taking the pic which cheered us up no end this grey morning. It’s a view of Scotland from the lake district. Wonderful stuff!
Monthly Archives: July 2025
Shivering Sands calling live on channel
Here’s an excellent radio programme featuring those Maunsell delights Shivering Sands. It’s a 24 minute great listen so tune in here for a very interesting listen. Thanks to the The Maunsell Seaforts Appreciation Goup on Facebook for posting this up!
And when we put Maunsell dub into Bandcamp it came up with this, a great version of United Melody by Addis Pablo no less.
A butcher’s around the garden

After a bit of rain last night in SE23 we viewed a few things this morning, the first being a small water lily on the pond. It’s been taken close up and looking again we’re still not sure what that is in the top right hand corner, micro frog spawn perhaps?
We’re seeing flower buds on the cosmos. We did sow a few seeds in various places but these are the ones that survived. There’re under an old dead cherry tree and they seem have taken well. In a few days there should be flowers (Cheers Debby H again).
And this look like a couple of the Thompson & Morgan seeds here. The above must be the Quick Fire Chilli Pepper to the rear and in front the Quick Snack Cucumber.
We’ve bought some plant feed now to supplement our ever dwindling amount of Comfrey liquid and with the supposedly 25 degrees C today, all should be the right stuff for these plants to grow well. Or so we hope!
Pop goes the teasel

It may not look like much but the above is a teasel bought off the internet. You see them growing in the wild and they have such a great flower/seed head. Give it another year and we should have something interesting to see. What we can’t believe is that it don’t feature in “Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” by Scott Cunningham (Llewellyn Worldwide). That can’t be right, but we have found out that the bloke who invented Velcro used the said plant as influence. The things you learn eh.
And talking of teasels here’s a tune by Mikah Sykes out of Portland, Oregon with Cutleaf Teasel (or Common Teasel) don’t know what genre this is, but it sure is interesting.
There’s Mullein in my garden, what am I gonna do?

We looked up Mullein in our “well interesting” or “well out there, man” (whatever your point of view about this book is) “Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” by Scott Cunningham (Llewellyn Worldwide). It’s a bonkers book and one that never fails to make us smile.

To the top of Forest Hill
Watering the garden early this morning just after we got up we noticed some great sights before it started to get hot. The echinops are now starting to flower and what flowers they are too.
We also now think these are the cosmos not the love in the mist that are beside them, the leaves are similar but not exactly the same. Shouldn’t be too long now before they flower (Cheers Debby H!)
And we are sure now that these are the Thompson & Morgan‘s Quick Fire chillies. It’s only a small plant but they sure are producing a lot of fruit! We also think beside this (not pictured) is their Quick Snack cucumbers. Ain’t gardening great?
Cheers to Gerry Hectic for sharing this very nice mix from Alina Bzhezhinska and Tulshi called Whispers of Rain (Continuous Mix) and boy wouldn’t it be nice to have some whispers of rain this week?
From the mountains in Sicily

Thanks to Mike & Julia for sending us some pictures from their holiday in the the mountains in Sicily. There’s a few photographs so they’ll be a part two over the weekend. Cheers for these pics Mike & Julia and have a good break!

A report from north London
A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of her garden that’s come on a bit since she went away for few weeks. The above is of the first cosmos flowers.
Above is the radio related Marconi red pepper which is doing very well and her second pepper plant (below) is looking good too.



A view of the cosmos and the lakes
Cheers to our friend in the Lake District Rich R for sending us a picture of his first cosmos flower, brilliant stuff. It’s fantastic about all this passing on seeds that gardeners do and a big cheers to Debby H for starting all this cosmos mania off in the first place. Ours are still a work in progress, but we may know more in a few days time.

Rich also sent us a pic of Bassenthwaite Lake from the other evening, looks great. Cheers for those!
A bike’s a bike, how do you describe a bike?
We love those 1970’s information films here and have spliced the “Lock Your Bike” classic film from 1974 over the top of a little bit of BiggaBush‘s excellent Beat Dem in Dub. A big cheers to BiggaBush for giving it the thumbs up and Gerry Hectic for linking the tune with the original video. What’s a frame number?
Big shout to Dr Strangedub who debuted the tune on the brilliant Echo Chamber here on KFAI at 96.40 mins in. If you love reggae and dub you must tune into this weekly show. Listen closely and you may even hear a couple more public information dub instrumentals. Big up the Echo Chamber!
Here’s another couple of classic films from time gone by.
As Half Man Half Biscuit once sang “It was loft ladders what killed our Martin”. If only Martin had watched a public information film before his trek into the loft as he would be around to tell his tale now.