Category Archives: From our guest contributor

Another report from north London

Posted on by
2

A big thanks to Debby H for sending us pictures of her garden now everything’s starting to hot up in the growing stakes.

Above is the Iris which is now flowering with some rather colourful geraniums below it.

The peonies (above) are great, we’ve got one with a deep red/purple flower but we’re liking the ones in white! We can see some staking going on here, in our garden the bush tends to grow out a bit competing with other plants for space and then flops over a bit after the rain. That’s where the staking comes in handy. Loving those white blooms.

Above is the ceanothus bush which is going at great guns and we’ve just read the plant has nitrogen fixing properties. New thing to us!

And finally the zephyranthes flower which is “slightly battered” as Debby described it but it still looks great to us. Cheers again for the pictures Debby!

(North) London Calling

Posted on by
Reply

A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of what’s going on in the flower pots and flower beds in north London at the moment. “The picture (above) is of our begonias which are now flowering. They nearly died the winter before last as we put them on the bathroom windowsill. They didn’t like it at all. Probably not enough light. They spent all last summer sulking and doing very little. However, it seems that they have now forgiven us, and are rewarding us with flowers.” Brilliant, good luck with them!

“Here’s a picture of our first bud on an iris plant that’s growing in a shady part of our back garden.”
“Also here’s photos of two front gardens near us. One garden has a lovely lot of irises. The other has an impressive array of Arum-Lilies.”
Excellent stuff Debby! It looks like we’re well on the way now weatherwise!

Spring must be here now!

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us a couple more pictures of their garden near Coventry again this week. What we thought was a great looking brick wall is actually decking (above) and we love the raised bedding and can spy a great looking poppy getting ready to flower if we’re not wrong.

And look at their well colourful trees and bushes (below). They’re looking good Mike and Julia! Keep sending us those pics of your great garden. It really is good to see how other people garden. If you want to send us some pictures of your garden, balcony or windowsill gardening exploits drop us an email to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

Radio (and Gardening) connects us all!

Posted on by
4

Thanks to Wlad (US7IGN) from Ukraine for getting in touch this week with some pics of his germinating dill seeds and sprouting garlic and potatoes that are all looking healthy. For some reason the old trick of cutting up seed potatoes in two so you can have two potato plants instead of one just came to mind. We are sure it was a reader of the blog who sent us that tip many moons ago.

His good friend Sergiy (UT3UFD) has now started off a date palm and he’s also got that great looking banana plant and the both are growing well. Brilliant stuff and good to hear from you Wlad, keep us up to date how the plants are getting on!

Morning all from Estonia

Posted on by
Reply

Big shout to our good mate The Rhythm Doctor for sending us a weather report out of the studio window of IDA Radio, Tallinn this morning. They’ve just had some snow out there and the top temperature in Tallinn for this forthcoming week is predicted to be -5 C. We’re certainly will not be complaining about the weather here!

If you want to listen to something great on a Monday morning tune in here for a two hour selection of Jazz, Reggae, Electronica and downbeat from 9am. It’s a show well worth tuning into!

Honey from down under

Posted on by
Reply

Big shout to our good friend Paul Greenstein once of the East Dulwich parish, now of Melbourne, Australia (we’ve featured his garden a few times here, here and here) and also a Madtone musical collaborator as Audiovert.

If you remember, Paul keeps bees in his garden (above: a pic of his bees from a while ago) and he’s just recently had his first bumper crop of honey (below), extracting around 30 kilos and reckon they may be more as well. Great stuff Paul and thanks for letting us know about it, we imagine it’s very hard work but well worth it though.

With some of the honey he’s been making Mead (below), one with Seville orange, cloves, raisins and cinnamon and the other with Morello cherries. Sounds and looks tasty! We tried making Mead once with honey procured from a stall at Leather Lane market. The recipe said it will either taste heavenly or like battery acid. Ours tasted like the latter, we never made it again!

Paul makes some great tunes under the name Audiovert including this Madtone collab African Bass and his contribution to the Shortwave Transmissions project here. Thanks for getting in touch Paul!

A view from the front door

Posted on by
Reply

Big thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a photo of Skiddaw (3054 feet) The snow has come a couple of weeks later than usual but it is there now (remember the last post from Rich here). Rich was saying it is quite a labourious walk of 3 hours to get to the peak with not many twists and turns but from the top you can see as far as Scotland across the Solway, The Isle of Man to the South and Northern Ireland to the west. Now that is one view!

And it looks like from the doorstep they get good night skies too. The top night picture has a tinge of the northern lights. Cheers for those Rich.

Outside view

Posted on by
Reply

Big thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us these great pictures. The snow cap peak is Blencathra or as the Victorian Tourists named it, Saddleback. What is strange is that the pic was taken (from his front doorstep) 3 years ago to the very day.

Now fast forward 3 years and look at the weather up there today (pic below), you wouldn’t think it was November. This morning in Forest Hill we picked some ripe cherry tomatoes off a plant in the back. How mad is that? Cheers for the pics Rich!

JNHK3 this Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

This Sunday 21st May 2023 at 2200 UTC on 9395 kHz on shortwave the Imaginary Stations crew will be bringing you JNHK 3 via the services of WRMI. This is the third in the Japanese influenced transmissions and will feature tunes and mixes from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore. There will also be mix from One Deck Pete called Big in Japan 2 featuring tunes from Casino Versus Japan, Gore, Solid Bronze and this corker fromTwo Lone Swordsmen. Tune in and turn on as they say…

Also a big shout to Takuji Sahara a long time listener of Imaginary Stations from Tokyo  for his contribition to last week’s JNHK 2 show. If you like recordings of radio in Japan you’ll love the show below: