Category Archives: Gardening connects us all

Let’s get cool in the pool

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Here’s a lovely chilled-out balearic mix from a long time friend Will J, who actually introduced us to the exellent Echo Chamber radio show on KFAI many many moons ago we remember (Dr Strangedub of said show’s raised beds were the feature of last post funnily enough!)

Reminiscent of those old C90’s from Jose Padilla and the balearic bailiff himself Phil Mison, the hour’s tape includes some excellent tracks including this one:

It’s a mix well worth playing loud when the sun comes out next (or even when it’s raining as it will cheer you up). Good stuff Will!

From the other side of the capital

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A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some garden updates over the weekend. Above is of the cosmos that is now coming into flower and will hopefully give a good show over the next few weeks.

The daisies (above) are doing great and attracting butterflies and bees and the above picture includes a gatekeeper butterfly.

As Debby told us “We have 3 ornithogalum flowers coming. These grow up to about 2 metres in height!” Here’s the link to what they looked like in September last year (here).

And above’s a picture of one of her dwarf sunflowers that has opened (it looks much better than our giant ones that went up to about 3 foot and had a small flower then just withered away) and (below) her first Capri Red Pepper. Excellent stuff Debby!

Answering the call of the cosmos

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It has finally come, the day the first cosmos flower appeared. We may have lost a few plants to the slugs earlier on this year but the few we started off in pots and are now undernearth the dead cherry tree have got buds on them and this afternoon one actually opened. Cheers to Debby H for starting us off on this cosmos journey. Anyone else got any cosmos pictures to post up here? One deck pete at gee mail dot com if so.

And today also saw one of the cardoons showing their first purple dyed spikey top with more growth to come in time we hope. The bee on it seems happy enough.

And for a Saturday evening here’s  a couple of excellent tunes, the first being from Cantoma (AKA Phil Mison The balearic fare dodger) called Light Before – Ambient Outro. It’s one piece of ambient chillout to end the day with!

 

And a lovely bit of dub from a set called Mid City Dub Encounters Vol.1 by Irie One and Lord Sekou on Jah Thunder Records and this track is called Kalimba Dub.

It’s not just the fake Bailey’s you should be buying at Lldl

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Cheers to Gerry Hectic who emailed us letting us know that “Lidl have a set of 6 really nice looking alpines for £4.99” (Below are the said offers which look great.) The top picture are the bargains in situ and we love the small stones on top of the pots that really work.

We haven’t got that many alpines/succulents but we picked up this sempervivum (in the forefron of the picture below) at a sale at a community garden two years ago (the one where we bought the mullien here) and have split it a few times since.

Behind that are a couple of mini succulents bought off ebay which are sandwiched between the pink geranium that we bought at another sale which has been divided a few times now and passed onto to our mates. It’s all about passing things on!

 

A butcher’s around the garden

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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

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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.

A report from north London

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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.

And her giant daisies (below) are coming along nicely!

There’s been a couple of suprises, one being a fuchsia that she thought was dead has come back to life and her ophiopogon (below), which is now flowering (little pink bell-like ones.)
It’s good coming back from being away and seeing how much has changed in the garden. Cheers for those Debby!