Category Archives: From our guest contributor

The day the lakes stood still

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Cheers to Rich R up in the Lake District for sending us some rather bonkers aurora pics from the other Thursday. Crazy, crazy stuff indeed!

Seeing this cosmic coloured sky, we wouldn’t be suprised if there’s also reports of a Gort-like robot out of The Day The Earth Stood Still seen walking down (carrying a large tote bag of course) to the Village Shop to get some lovely home-made confectionery before he starts his night-shift guarding flying saucers and the like. Cheers Rich for the wonderful pictures. All we can say here is wow!

Even more from north London

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Just before we go away for a few days at the south coast, here’s some great gardening pictures from our friend in north London, Debby H. The cosmos patch is still going strong (above) and bright and colourful. The next is the cana lilly, now flowering for the first time this year (below).

“Then there’s the wonderful Ornithogalum (below) with four flowers now clearly visible.” it does look wonderful Debby!

Then there’s the sedum (above) and the great Zephyranthes Lilly flowers (below).
“And just up the road from here is a great front garden with a wonderful array of tomatoes all along the front border. There’s also sun flowers and other plants I don’t recognise.” That front garden is crazy! Love those climbing tomatoes! Cheers for sending those Debby.

In the beginning there was rhythm

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Weeds up to me knees give a big shout to Chris The Rhythm Doctor who was interviewed on this week’s Gilles Peterson’s breakfast show on Worldwide FM. After a while of waiting for the show to go up online yesterday, the show is now finally up in all its glory on Mixcloud.

At 1.37.00 on the show is the interview featuring Chris chatting about his early days in Birmingham and Coventry, a good bit about the Jazz Funk days and bit on his involvement in the early days of House music. Trouble is, there’s loads more that can go in there! Any chance of a part two or three, Gilles?

At 2.33.00 in there’s an exclusive mix from Chris. Cheers to him for playing two Jasmine Tutum & Madtone tracks alongside lots of great eclectic stuff including the brilliant Don Cavalli “Fire Fire”, Arina Singh and the crazy dub of The Detonators “Lift Off” (which as the legend goes, after hearing it, Jerry Dammers contacted the tune’s producer John Collins and got him to produce The Specials’ Ghost Town).

Do check RD’s label Almost Unknown on Bandcamp here and expect more releases on the label. And as we keep mentioning, do check out his Monday morning show here on IDA Radio (Tallin) which has a fine mix of tunes for the start of the week.

Here’s the full tracklistings of the mix as it’s a bit sketchy on the Worldwide site at the present moment:

01. Uku Kuut – Visions of Estonia (PPU)
02. Collage – Uni,Tule Silma Peale!/Sleep,Come On The Eye! (Melodiya)
03. Treee vs Hüpnosaurus – Suveöö/Summer Night – Rhythm Doctor Rub (Umblu)
04. N.Ae. – Fatum/Fate (Polskie Nagrania Muza)
05. Arina Singh – Persian Glitter Carpet (Unreleased)
06. Jasmine Tutum & Madtone featuring Lee “Scratch” Perry – Livicate (Unreleased)
07. Maarja Nuut – Kutse Tantsule/A Call To Dance (Self Released)
08. Gunars Rozenbergs – Disko Roze (Melodiya)
09. Konstantin Orbelyan – Vocalese (Melodiya)
10. Medey – The Hunter Suite (pt 1) mix Stanton Davis (Melodiya)
11. The Detonators – Lift Off (Special Request)
12. Jasmine Tutum & Madtone – What Is Man (Unreleased)
13. Don Cavalli – Fire Fire (Rag Records)
14. The Outlaws – Crazy Drums (His Masters Voice)
15. Chyskyyrai – Khara Tüün – Rhythm Doctor radio edit (Indigenous Lifeforms)
16. Vladimir Tarasov – Monotipijos 45 (Melodiya)
17. Skeet – Meathouse (Almost Unknown)
18. Mad Musician – Jazz In (Tribe Recordings)
19. Ajukaja & Ats – Signal (Mida)

North London garden news

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A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of what’s going on at the moment in the plant pots and flower beds in her north London garden. The ornithogalum above and below has started to produce more flowers and looks great.

The pictures of the cosmos (below) in her last post here influenced us to run out and get a plant for ourselves. It’s now in a pot  and with its great flowers they’re a new favourite of ours here at Weeds.

The phlox and the sedum (below) are looking healthy too, unlike some of the plants in our garden. We’ve been doing a fair bit of watering here but there’s only so many times you can go up and down the garden with a watering can.

We stopped the hose a good few years ago after Gerry Hectic recommended a great episode of Gardeners’ World which was about conserving water which shamed us from using said hosepipe. What was funny we were going to get the hose out yesterday and when we unravelled the thing we noticed that the outside tap was stuck in the “Stop” position. Someone somewhere was making sure we didn’t use that hose!

The golden rod looks gigantic and the flowers are starting to open and the tomatoes are looking healthy too.

Cheers for the pictures Debby as they are appreciated here.

Hey, what gives in Crete?

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Cheers to Mike and Julia for sending us some excellent horticultural snaps taken on their holiday to Crete. It was mighty hot out there they told us and it’s something else to think that plants actually survive the intense heat out there. The pomegranite tree is looking great and one we’d love in our garden.

Do enjoy these great pics.

We think they’ll be a follow up to this post as Julia has taken a good few pictures and they all look great! The above is the crimson bottlebrush that we have in the front garden and hasn’t really done all that well this year and we imagined it was to do with the heat. Thinking about it, we imagine Crete is possibly on average, a little bit hotter than Forest Hill.

Great photographs Julia and we’ll do a part two in a couple of days time as they are all great. Thanks for sending the holiday pictures as it’s great to see what grows elsewhere in the world. Do send us your worldwide plant pics to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

Pictures from Kyiv

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Cheers to Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some pictures a fortnight or so which we’ve only got around to posting now. The first is how his good mate Sergiy (UT3UFD)‘s indoor banana plant is doing (above) and as you can it’s looking healthy! Love to know how his date palm is getting on.

And here’s a nice picture of how Wlad’s Dill and Potatoes make a good combination in the same container. We’ve sowed some Dill here a few years ago and actually got it to grow but didn’t really do anything with it sadly as we weren’t into the herb at the time but the Dill above is looking healthy. More on how to grow Dill here. Cheers for the pictures Wlad.

Something very special from far far away

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A big shout to Jesse Yuen (of RTMFM’s North of The River Swan) for letting us know that he’s moved into a new house in Perth and that in the garden they have a wonderful looking Foxtail Agave (above) that’s actually flowering! As Jesse said “Flowers are rare for the plant and each one only flowers once in their life, after 10-15 years.” and he also said “It’s like ours is welcoming us to the new house.” We agree with you there! What a great housewarming present.

Jesse also said “All over Perth you can see them flowering, and the members of local gardening Facebook groups are speculating that because we had a really dry, long summer, they are in shock which has bought on a mass flowering season.”

He was saying the bees are going bonkers for the flowers and told us “Apparently once it finishes flowering the big head dies off and these smaller “pups” take over” (above and below).

Absolutely wonderful stuff Jesse and best of luck to you and the family for the new house and hope everything goes well with the move and getting settled in! More on the wonderful plant here.

New beginnings

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Thank you to our mate Rich in the Lake District for sending us photographs of the newly formed community allotment in his area. They had a generous farmer donate them some land earlier this year and now the space is a work in progress (above and below). As Rich said “The allotment is in a very special spot and we are really enjoying having a go” (look at the scenery in the background!) and that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about just cracking on, learning by any mistakes, enjoying the many successes and going with the process. Go with the (gardening) flow!

The report so far from Rich: “We have set out loads of small plots and planted all kinds of stuff. Spuds, carrots, rhubarb, turnips and squash. We had lots of donations from others. Apparently there are 2 herds of deer in neighbouring fields but so far nothing has eaten our stuff, which is not only growing nicely, but also not dying! We have planted in about 75% of our huge patch and will be delighted if we manage to get a meal out of it in the end!” That’s great news Rich!

Also Rich told us that his neighbours saw a giant Stag in his back garden the other day. We’ve had reports of Wild Boars in gardens in France from Debby H and now Stags in the Lake District. Blimmin eck, crazy stuff.

We remember a few years ago going to an allotment not far from here and one of the allotmenteers (you can call them that can’t you?) had one big cosy shed with a dartboard, football table (and supposedly a bar but we’re not sure if we were being wound up) and a big BBQ grill outside. By all accounts it was in use as a clubhouse type socialising hotspot from 7am till well after sundown during summer (we’re sure it had outside lighting and fairy lights adorning it too). How the owners and their neighbours had time for actual allotment maintenance we don’t know.

As we reported at one of our Steroid Abuse nights many moons ago (above), allotments are fast becoming the new nightclubs/social clubs/pubs! And why not?

We look forward to more pictures of this horticultural development and to hear about how people have got on with it all there. Thanks again for sharing the pictures Rich!

A message from the south of France

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A big thanks to Debby H who is out in the south of France at the moment enjoying some nice weather of around 28 degrees and there’s only been the odd day of rain since May. Picture above is the front garden with mainly self seeded/volunteer plants in the bed which looks great especially with the rocks/stones around it.
The other night she had a visit from some wild boar and as she said “They are complete vandals. They trampled down the vine (pic above), destroying a dozen bunches of tiny grapes that were just beginning to grow in the back garden. The poor thing is now a shadow of its former glory”
“They also destroyed one of the bird feeders, which was about 5 foot off the ground in a bush.” Here’s a pic of some lavender in the garden after being trampled by the boar. And we thought we had it bad in Forest Hill with the parakeets, the Ladywell heron and the foxes!
“What is good though is that the front garden is unharmed including the little lilac tree that is only about a foot tall, after about 5 years of growing (above). The soil here is like concrete and most plants die. Anything that self seeds, I allow to stay and it’s those that usually flourish.”

What is strange though is her oleander (above) is the only one in the whole region that isn’t flowering! We hope it’s a bit of a late starter and it surpises you Debby.

And Debby took some pictures of the other oleanders in her neighbourhood below.
Thanks again Debby for the great pictures and we’re always up for seeing other people’s gardens and around their locality.

Words in papers, words in books

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Big thanks to Gerry Hectic our man from the south coast for sending us his “Wise words or not” mix. It’s a great one as ever with lots of tunes that we’ve never heard before (Yvonne Baker being one of them, what a great track) and a mix to investigate. Here’s the tracks:
Moritz von Oswald Trio – Chapter One
Mike Leander And His Orchestra – The Letter
The Harvey Averne Dozen – The Word
Yvonne Baker – Didn’t Say A Word
The G.G. All Stars – (Same Folks) Dub Wise
Felipe Gordon – No Words (Byron the Aquarius Dub Mix)

Gerry’s mix was inspired by WORD on Imaginary Stations on Sunday which is now up online on the Imaginary Stations Mixcloud below. The show featured books, (Radio Phonic) laboratories, dictionary rock, abbreviations and ampersands and lots more from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

The first track on the show from The Real Tuesday Weld called Last Words is how you use shortwave samples in a tune!

At 21.13 mins in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “A Word to the Wise” and the tracks are:
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)
The Medallions – The Letter
Giorgio (Moroder) – Stop
Capital Letters – Smoking My Ganja
Jourbert Singers – Stand on the word
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)

Cheers again to Gerry for sending us his mix and here’s more WORD related tunes.