Category Archives: Guest Gardeners

We love shortwave!

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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 delayed report from Bristol

Posted on by
Reply

We also had a recent report from Kit, G5KIT in Bristol which we’ve just got around to posting up now. He’s cleared out the cleavers from his herb corner above (which is well up our street!) and as he told us “surprisingly, the parsley is thriving underneath. The anti-cat sticks seem to still be doing their thing, too.” “I’ll probably pop some basil, mint and thyme in there around the parsley, just so there’s something vigorous to fight the weeds off.”

That’s a great idea and we do know mint can be a bit vigorous at times, but we’ve got a couple of mint plants in the garden that are still in their original pots (buried into the soil) that helps to keep them from spreading too much.

Cheers Kit, do keep letting us know how things are doing!

Jumps and scratches free with every mix!

Posted on by
Reply

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

 

Gardening with a Violet Gown (on)

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to our good friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending us this musical recommendation by The Lost called Violet Gown and it’s a wonderful tune! On a psychedelic soul tip, and there’s some nice coconut shell sounding percussion in there too!

The tune sounds like something that should be on the excellent Andrew Weatherall – Live at Antenna Studios mix from years ago. Lots of interesting stuff on The Lost here. Cheers Justin!

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

Posted on by
Reply

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!

Waiting in the (roots) garden

Posted on by
2

The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA radio is a wonderful mix up business of a Monday morning radio show and as you know, we love it here. This week’s show is a bit of a first, and features a great interview with Rakesh Rootsman Rak and a lovely reggae selection featuring Ernest Ranglin, The Twinkle Brothers, Aswad, I-Natural, Culture, Prince Lincoln and The Royal Rasses, The Natural Ites and more.

In the interview there’s talk of Rootsman Rak’s work which involves growing food, forest gardens, working with nature, permaculture and (as Gerry Hectic mentioned on his Facebook) “ethical gardening ideas”. Well worth tuning in and having a listen. Do have a look at Rootsman Rak’s site here and bit more about him here.

Cheers for The Rhythm Doctor for having some gardening reggae business on his show and Gerry Hectic for letting us know about it this morning.

In north London the gardens are certainly waking up

Posted on by
Reply

Great to hear from Debby H in north London for letting us know how her garden is at this time of the year. She said, ” I have now planted the cosmos in the back garden (above), and we have hundreds of bluebells coming up this year (below)” There’s a big clump behind the cosmos above.

“I thought I would include a picture of our pear tree which has more blossom this year than I remember from previous years. To the left of the tree is the doronicum, which is also blooming well.” There’s a post about the doronicum from March here.

Thanks as always Debby and great to see that things are developing in the garden!

Dave visited Bristol too

Posted on by
2

We also had a report from Kit, G5KIT from Bristol who was telling us that “Storm Dave is definitely making his presence felt, and it’s just been too windy to do anything other than see how much ground the cleavers have claimed in their battle for the parsley patch (below). Instead, we’ve been entertained by watching the magpies and crows battling for tactical supremacy in the trees across the road (above)”. Funny enough you say that Kit, as yesterday morning there was some magpies and crow business going on in the trees at the back of us. Are the birds fighting back in the aftermath of Dave?

Cheers to Kit for sending us a Moon mix inspired by the Artemis rocket trip presently orbiting that moon of ours. #TheMoonConnectsUsAll

Astronomy Domine – Pink Floyd
Space Truckin’ – Deep Purple
2000 Light Years from Home – The Rolling Stones
There’s a Moon in the Sky – The B52’s
Supersonic Rocket Ship – The Kinks

And for the Bank Holiday Gardening Monday here’s a couple of moon related tunes.

 

News from ‘om

Posted on by
Reply

The other day we saw a great space saving device on Facebook; someone had put their seed trays on a shoe rack. Unfortunately, we haven’t got a shoe rack on hand, and the kitchen window is well full. We found this rack thing in the street a few months ago knowing it will come in handy soon, and it did! It’s holding up some Moneymaker tomatoes and some marvel of Peru seedlings. Below are a few different varieties of basil which we sowed today.

We’re trying to find time to tidy up the wild bit and going to fill the now weed-free area around the penstemons and love-in-a-mist with some wildflower seeds. The window frame that once had glass in it is now used to shield some plastic seed covers so they don’t blow away. Waste not, want not, part 33!