And now from the north of the Capital…

Great to hear from Debby H in north London this morning, she sent us pictures of her phormium tenax before she goes away for a while and here’s the how the flowers are developing.
She also sent us pictures of her Peonies (below), as she said “Not so many flowers this year but still pretty!” They look great Debby, hope all’s good with you and ta for the pictures.

The wonders of modern radio

It was the first time in a bit that have we listened live to The Rhythm Doctor‘s excellent Waiting Room (every Monday morning from 9-11am UK time) out of Tallinn, Estonia.

There’s some wonderful chilledness at the start (17 mins in) that stopped us our tracks when we were filling up our watering can to give the garden a bit of a quick water. We potted up some seedlings just as it got to the dubbed-out section (55 mins in) and by the end of the show when he plays some shackleton stuff, we had enough of the heat outside!

RD played the wonderful Two Lone Swordsmen track Neuflex as mixed by Dry & Heavy which is a classic. Great to hear this again, crazy stuff.

Do yourself a favour this Bank Holiday Monday and chill out in the waiting room for a couple of hours. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, today’s show is now up online, so you have no excuse.

And over in France

Thanks to Spike from Morschen43 in Le Puy-en-Velay, for sending over more pictures of his house and garden over there. It looks like they’re enjoying some lovely weather right now too.

We mentioned in the post the other day (here) that we loved the use of an old staircase to put window boxes on and here’s a couple here above with also a nice table from a restaurant in the Marais in Paris which was originally green and has now painted black. Nice stuff.

Another thing we love is the use of fossils (above) and some fossilised wood (below) in the garden as well. The fossilised wood was from his father who used to swap fossils and minerals with a friend in Bourgogne (aka Burgundy). Really great ideas Spike!

Please don’t tell us “summer” has ended

We’ve heard today in true British Bank Holiday style, that the current lovely weather we’re having is coming to an abrupt end this weekend. Typical! But to cheer us up here’s a couple of great photographs.

The first (above) is Rich in the Lake District’s back garden. Doesn’t it look great! As he said, “The bluebells are really high now”. That’s one chilled out view there Rich, we bet it’s a nice calm place to relax in!

And above is Debby H‘s garden in north London, more specifically the cosmos bed. Debby told us “I can’t believe the number of flowers that we have already on our cosmos plants. They’re only small, about 30 cm high. We planted them out about 3 weeks ago and most of the flowers have come since then. In previous years we haven’t had these many flowers till late summer.”

“I planted the seeds in mid-February, whereas I have done it in March previously. I kept half indoors on a windowsill, and the other half were moved to our plastic greenhouse. It doesn’t seem to have made any difference to how they are growing.” It’s always good to experiment and see what happens. Thanks for the report Debby, we scattered our cosmos seed all over the garden this year and not sure if any have come up or those damned slugs have had them. We will keep you all posted.

And thanks to the great blog from Penny Golightly here’s news of some free herbs seeds here. Cheers Penny!

We love shortwave!

Below is the studio version of this morning’s Imaginary Station’s WWLS – We Love Shortwave transmission from Radio Miami International featuring tunes and mixes from DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and Kit, G5KIT. If you love shortwave you’ll love WWLS!

At 22.45 there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called We love Shortwave. Here’s the tracklistings:

Radio Sweden Interval Signal
Triptica – Mysterious Radio Signals
Jasmine Tutum & Madtone – This Frequency
Shortwave Sounds – Reflections
Madtone – Spoken Words from Ibiza
Holger Czukay/Jah Wobble – Hiss n Listen
Gregory Morris & The 18th Parallel – Dub In Your Stereo (dub of Message in your radio by Kumar)

We’ve got those Car Boot blues

We recently attended a car boot at a South London car park at 6.45 am early doors, after gaining special “VIP Early Bird Dealer only access”, which basically meant handing six quid cash to a bloke on the gate while he chatted with a school boy on a pushbike.

One of the sellers was a vendor who looked like something out of Only Fools and Horses, battered Crombie, pork pie hat, two dinner plate sized badges and trousers hitched up a little too much showing some shin. He was pitched up next to an angry Millwall looking bloke selling large packs of bin bags and knock off perfume.

On the Crombie guy’s stall sat a Hohner Melodica. “Thirty quid,” he chirped. “Sixties original mate. It’s a beauty but the case is a bit bxggxred” Charming!

A “serious” muso type (so we thought) stepped up. He handled the instrument like he knew it inside out. “Mind if I play it?” he asked. “No bother, son,” came the reply from Del Boy.

We hesitated, bracing ourselves for some Augustus Pablo-style dub business. He took a breath, pursed his lips, looked around as if he was playing to a large crowd and proceeded to give a very bad short rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Even the Millwall guy selling the bin bags put his eyes up to heaven. It certainly weren’t Pablo…

Good luck to all for some great weather tomorrow for a spot of Sunday gardening!

A little whistling bird told me so

Cheers to Spike from Morschen43 for sharing more photos of his garden in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. He was trying to take a pic of his apple tree and didn’t seen the blackbird on it that just didn’t move, so giving him a super picture and whistled a great tune as well!

Here’s some assorted photographs of the plum tree and some blossom around the garden. Spike certainly has a great looking garden and home!

And thanks to Spike, we heard this tune on his last Vampirefreaks radio show. It’s from Sidarsen and called Des Millards (from 4.51 mins in). It’s 18 mins long but it really is a bit of a hypnotising /strange one.

Here’s what Spike’s weekly radio show is all about: “Vampirefreaks is a show primarily focused on rock/punk but also covering the world of reggae, ska, dub, metal, hard rock, and sometimes hip-hop.” So if you love that stuff, tune in!

Cheers again to Spike for playing this tune as we’ve never heard of this before and for keeping up to date on the gardening tip. Keep those pictures and reports coming Spike!

Jumps and scratches free with every mix!

Here’s a brand new (old) mix from One Deck Pete with tunes obtained from car parks in this big city of ours, out of various boxes, vinyl strewn over blankets from stalls next to “geezers” selling fake perfume and bin bags. No returns please and cash only, Okay?

Here’s the tracklistings:
Bob Marley – Mr Chatterbox
Willie Lindo – Midnight
Bob Andy – You don’t know
The Revolutionaries – MPLA + Version
I Roy – Cow Town Skank
Augustus Pablo – Cow Town Version
John Holt – Stranger in love
The Tennors – Pressure and slide
John Holt – Moving Away
The Revolutionaries – Revolution dub

 

It all seems to have started up north

A big thanks to Debby H. for sharing an update from her north London garden! While we sowed ours directly outside this year and are still waiting for them to pop up, Debby’s cosmos are already starting to flower even though the plants are still small (see her photos above).

It’s great to see that her seed potatoes are finally breaking through. There’s some really healthy growth on them already.

Elsewhere in the garden, the rhododendron is also blooming beautifully.

As she mentioned “The bluebells are still lovely, although unfortunately not the native ones” (above).

The garden is looking great at this time of year as well, what’s it going to look like later this year? We can’t wait to find out, keeping sending us the updates Debby!

Gardening all over the world (as Status Quo may have sang)

Thanks to our Downbeat on Shortwave collaborator and gardening friend Jesse Yuen who was out and about in his garden in Perth last weekend and sent us some pictures. (Top Picture) “It’s about 4.30pm in the afternoon, but there’s beautiful light because there’s a bush fire burning somewhere, so the smoke is giving everything a bit of a golden hue.”

He’s just acquired a new plant, a yellow flowering kangaroo paw. “I salvaged them from a house down the road about to be knocked down as I was on my way to DJ at a bush doof. I’ve been keeping it alive in a pot in the backyard until the weather cooled down and I had a chance to plant it.” That’s a find! More on the plant here.

He also got himself a eucalyptus macrocarpa for his garden. As he told us “This one is an absolute beauty. We’ve been on the waiting list at our local nursery for about six months, but some people wait for over two years. It’s a native, but it’s rare to buy it at a nursery. Check out pictures of it in an adult form to see how it gets.” See pic below, blimmin ‘eck!

And related to the kangaroo paw, here’s some pictures of the bush doof Jesse was DJing at and it looks a looks a great one!

He also said, “I’m gardening to the sounds of the preview of an amazing sounding downtempo album by local Australian artist Freda” and here’s a track from it.

 

Cheers for keeping us updated Jesse and the garden (and the bush rdoof) looks great!