Here’s the latest Lingua Franca (Episode number 10!) with “Songs sung in different languages” from Will Jeff on Love Will Save The Day FM.
If you want a nice worldwide mix up journey of a radio show, you can’t get better than this. Cheers Will!
Seen at Herne Hill Market the other week, a great one from the artist called Julie Lomoe from 1969! Great graphics with a wonderful sense of humour about Hip Ski Tripping. Far out! That’s a cool jumper the skier is wearing and also some nice ski kecks.
The polytunnel is now up and we are in business! There’s nowt much in there now apart from some assorted chillies, a few different types of tomatoes and some freshly sown spinach but we’re sure that’ll change in a week or so.
It took us a good morning and a bit of “That isn’t the right piece, where’s 5B?”, the thing falling apart and it looking like a skeleton of a whale on the lawn, and parts moving when they weren’t supposed to but we got there in the end. After a good tighten up, the frame was put into place (above). Thanks to Alan C for lots of tips, especially this great one: “I put a layer of woodchip under mine but some use wood strips or gravel/stones. This gives a nice evenly flat base and slows the frame rusting – the woodchip quickly dries out and separates the poles from the soil.”
As soon as we put the cover on we dug a little trench and tucked the excess of the cover into the ground and put broken concrete slabs, bricks and whathaveyou to weigh it down and then backfilled with soil and more woodchip so it is hopefully stays put in the wind.
As we said there’s not much in there at the moment but we’ll update you. Cheers to Alan C again for his tips and advice. Big up all Polytunnel crew!
Cheers to our good friend in Cincinnati, Justin Patrick Moore for the pictures of his harvest from the other day, some brilliant eggplants (aubergines) there and is that a small cucumber? Brilliant stuff Justin.
And from Spike from Morschen43 in Le Puy-en-Velay some great Haricot Beurre (butter beans) which he said “has a nice taste and are delicious with tomatoes” and talking of tomatoes, here’s his first Black Crimea beefsteak (below)
And below a Beefheart (also known as Coeur de Bœuf or oxheart tomato). Wow they look great! Cheers for sending them on Spike as they look great.
And talking of the great captain himself:
Thanks to Debby H for this great (inverted) image of the partial eclipse last night taken in north London at the maximum at 7.13 pm. What an excellent photograph!
And here’s two eclipse related tracks, the first from the The Eclipse Band with a very aptly titled Daylight Robbery. And another, from DNN called Eclipse Dub.
Thanks to Adrienne for sharing these photos of her Cosmos that is looking very pretty. This was grown from seed passed on from our gardening friend in north London Debby H. This is what gardening is all about, sharing and passing stuff on! Cheers again Adrienne.
Great to hear from Debby H in north London yesterday, she’s just back from a break away and sent us pictures from her back garden. She said what with the heatwave “Thanks to our indoor and outdoor watering systems, our plants seem mostly ok” and that’s good to hear! Sadly, “The cosmos isn’t doing so well yet, but there’s still hope for later this summer. It’s the same with ours too, none of the seeds took or if they did, the slugs took them right in front of our noses. Her Zephyranthes Robusta are having another flush of flowers (above). More on the vibrant Argentine rain lily here.
“The big daisies seem very happy” (above) in the tidy bed above. They do seem healthy and so does the lawn, not like ours at Weeds HQ!
The phomium tenax flowers are now mostly turning into seed (above).
And finally, “The dwarf sunflowers are now in full bloom” and look how great they look! Cheers Debby for sending us the updates and do send us more!
A big thanks goes out to Spike from Morschen43 from a very sunny and hot Le Puy-en-Velay, France for keeping us regularly updated about his great garden in the mountains (here). The other day he sent us pictures including some of how his tomatoes are doing.
We were only saying to ourselves the other day that we think the feed we are using (all-purpose feed rather than a specific tomato feed) is making the leaves dark green and were wondering were we feeding them too much nitrogen? We’ve now got a couple of flower trusses starting to show on our plants so they may be okay but looking at Spike’s plants with some large size fruits growing we’re not so sure.
The plants are looking well happy and we love the classic companion planting of Marigolds above (there’s a nice bit about companion planting here). Spike was telling us when he bought the plants they included these varieties below which we’ve never heard of before and they sound well interesting:
The Beef Heart “A heritage variety with a most unusual heart shape fruit. Beefsteak type with excellent flavour and few seeds. Ripens to deep red.”
www.mammothonion.co.uk
Black Crimea “An old, heirloom variety AKA ‘Black Krim’, this sweet and spicy beefsteak tomato has a wonderful aroma and distinctive dark reddish-brown skin ideal for soups, slicing and sauces. Named after the peninsula, ‘Black Crimea’ each olive-shouldered fruit can weigh in at 350g each!”
www.rhsplants.co.uk
Andean horned “Tomato Bellandine, sometimes nicknamed Horn of the Andes, is an indeterminate cordon variety producing long, elegant plum-shaped fruits. Each tomato typically weighs 180 – 230 g and measures up to 18 cm long. The flesh is firm, very fleshy, and almost seedless, delivering an excellent sweet flavour with a rich aroma.”
www.simplyseed.co.uk
Alongside the pictures of the tomatoes he sent us a picture (below) of the vine growing across the house which they got off a neighbour of his grand parents in Troyes (Capital of the Champagne region). Great stuff Spike. Do keep updating us as we appreciate it here!
If you love a bit of rock/punk and a bit of reggae, ska, dub, metal, hard rock, tune into Spike’s Vampirefreaks radio show here. The shows are archived here.
Apart from mentions of Stonehenge at solstice time, we think this is a first for Weeds! Here are some brilliant photographs from Rich up in the Lake District of a stone circle very local to him called Castlerigg. More on the stone circle here and here. This looks like a brilliant place. Cheers Rich!
Any of our readers got any good standing stone pictures? Or have one around the corner from where they live. If so, send them over to one deck pete at gee mail dot come and we’re post them up.
More pics and info of Castlerigg on Julian Cope’s Modern Antiquarian here.
Want to see the Sun rise over the heel stone at 04.52 am tomorrow and enjoy some true solstice vibes from the comfort of your own home/bed?
Feeling a bit too long in the tooth for standing in the cold all night, and listening to the sound of early morning drumming workshops with no sleep is not the aural delight it used to be? Tune into the above youtube for some genuine solstice vibes piped to you via the internet. Put on your best Stonehenge slippers, have some tea and toast ready and watch that magic moment when the sun rises.
A Happy Solstice to you all, whatever time it is where you are and wherever you’ll be celebrating the solstice.
We love the stories of the good old days when Ken Barlow used to turn up at a Stonehenge solstice and you could sit on top of the stones and watch whilst Hawkwind played “Silver Machine” as the sun came up. All for Free! Unfortunately we didn’t go to any of the festivals there but attempted it once and missed it by one day. The convoy was driving off when we got there.
Big up Wally Hope by the way, organiser of the Stonehenge Festival. Without him there would be no Crass and without Crass there would be no Crass-like Anarchic seed sowing method that we use.
Weeds up to me knees 