It’s a terrible day today here in London. It’s tipping it down, feels about zero degrees and last night we even put some protection around the mimosa plant we have in a large pot near the house, just in case.
It’s a lot better over the other side of the world in Perth, Australia where our Downbeat on Shortwave collaborator Jesse Yuen is, and he’s sent a couple of pictures of the gardening work he did yesterday in the searing heat of 36 °C but today is a nicer 26 °C. Above is a view of the front garden which is coming along nicely (in October he sent us a post about starting work on his garden here) and yesterday he put some steel edging in. Looks great!
Also he planted a hakea pin cushion plant, that we had never heard of before. He said, “They have amazing flowers when mature” and he’s right there (below).
Cheers for the update Jesse and we look forward to seeing more pictures of the garden as they are inspiring.
Last weekend, Imaginary Stations beamed their Annual 45th Parallel Midwinter Broadcast via the ionosphere using the services of the great Shortwave Gold. From a secret shortwave laboratory in the mountains way up north, the broadcast had tracks featuring the circle of latitude, music from above, below and along the magic line, and also tunes to keep us warm during this mid-winter season thanks to DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.
And at 07.15 One Deck Pete brings us a mix called Above and Below the 45th Parallel.
Tracklistings:
Radio Lario – 30 Degrees North
Boca 45 – Forty Five
Haj i Ji – Above and below (RSD remix)
The 45 King – Armen
The Soulfulists – 4 degrees warmer
So get wrapped up, get a cup of hot cocoa in your hands and make sure you’re wearing those warm comfy slippers and enjoy this show of the highest (45 degrees) order,
Imaginary Stations will be bringing another Downbeat on Shortwave (show number 3) this weekend (cheers Fred!) on Saturday 14th February 2026 at 1200 UTC and on Sunday 15th February 2026 at 1000/1400 hrs/2100 UTC on 6160 kHz.
Our good dub gardening friend Jesse Yuen from North of The River Swan, Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from SE23, will be bringing you two 15 minute mixes each in a back to back downtempo style.
Tune in your shortwave radio or if you haven’t got one, via an online Software Defined Radio here (tuned into 6160 kHz) at the right time this weekend in AM mode and listen in and chill out to their slow-mo selection.
A massive thank you to Spike from Morschen43, who is located near Le Puy-en-Velay in Southern France. He sent over some snaps of his house and garden yesterday, and a nice slice of the world it is.
You might remember Spike from his track “MV Ross Revenge (For Ever!)”, a tune we love and featured in a couple of our shortwave mixes. As well as making music, he loves a bit of horticulture too!
As well as growing flowers he grows vegetables as well, and we’re loving the veg patch below. For those who know us, you know we have a soft spot for a good runner bean cane! The long row of canes and that classic wigwam structure to the left are right up our street. We’re already looking forward to seeing how the vegetable garden progresses as the seasons change (more photographs later this year please Spike!)
Spike spent yesterday giving his roses some attention. As he said, “Roses need concentration and attention for cutting.” He’s right there! When we worked for the council, many years ago, there was no love for the craft. No one cared about achieving that classic “rosebowl” effect or making sure the cut was just above an outward-facing bud. They’d just hack them all down to a uniform two feet! It’s good to hear that there are people who still care.
To go along with the photos, Spike picked out a track from his Bandcamp, a duet titled “J’Aime Les Brunes Sans Filtres”
Cheers for the photographs of your great house and garden, Spike! Keep those pictures coming as the garden grows as we’ll be well interested in how you get on in that great vegetable patch.
∑∑´´
Big thanks to our good friend in Kyiv, Wlad (US7IGN) for getting in touch this week. He last post was in November and if you remember, there was a potato shaped like a love heart and photographs of his good friend Sergiy UT3UFD‘s collection of seedlings that were started from seeds of whatever he eats here.
Sergiy’s advocado is coming along well (above) since last time and as Wlad jokingly said “His banana even had a baby!” (below).
Wonderful stuff, when you think they are having as he told us, “regular problems with heating, water (out for up to 3 days), and electricity, but we survive even at -20C at night.” Wow, that is some going -20C!
The best thing we think, is how he experimented with the seeds from a pitaya he bought and they’ve started to come really well, growing their first set of “true” leaves (main picture at the top and below).
And if you remember, this is how he heats his plants, with this ingenious set up:
Great to hear from you as ever Wlad, thanks for the pictures of Sergiy’s growing experiments, as they are fantastic!
By the way Wlad has finished his third book, which is available here. Here’s a mention of it on SWLing Post here.
A big thanks and a massive shout goes out to our good friend Stevyn from the excellent Iron Feather Journal fanzine in Hokkaido, Japan. He sent us a 5 tune mix which was put together earlier this evening at 11.45pm on New Years Eve (Japan Standard Time). It’s wonderful stuff and apart from the Hendrix intro, we’ve never heard any of the tunes before and we could imagine the late great Jose Padilla playing the Kitaro track on one of his “Cafe Del Mar” cassettes.
Here’s the tracklistings of Stevyn’s mix:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “EXP”
Hall & Oates – “Wait for Me” [Recorded live at the Montreal Forum in March 1983]
Space Battleship Yamato – Planet Shalbart
Kitaro – Aqua
Godiego – Flying
And additional notes about the mix: “Space Battleship Yamato AKA Star Blazers was my favourite anime when I was a kid, watching it on Boston US TV in the 80s” and “Kitaro was a customer when I was a college student in Boulder and clerking at the bohemian cafe Penny lane”.
A happy new year to you and yours out there in Hokkaido Stevyn! Cheers for the first mix of 2026!
A big thanks go out to our old friend Chris D (who we went to see The Clash in Bury St Edmunds with many moons ago here) who now resides in Adelaide, Australia for getting in touch. He’s got a new house and has been busy transforming the solid clay and weeds that were there beforehand into a smart looking garden (above and below).
It’s still only early days yet and things will progress but it’s looking brilliant. The two pics below were at post weed eradication stage. What started as rock-hard clay in summer and sticky, mud that sticks to your boots in the winter is now turning into something special. We know what you mean about that clay soil Chris!
He did a lot of the work himself but got a bit of help in where he needed things building, pavements laying and gravel being put down. We love the idea of the raised beds (with decent compost in it) which’ll give the plants a fighting chance in the tough conditions out there what with the snakes (!) and rabbits combined with the searing sun.
He’s already watched blackbirds helping themselves to his strawberries he told us. It’s annoying but in a way it’s a sign that things are growing. We reckon it’s out with the old strawberry nets or put those old CDs on string which’ll move in the breeze that’ll hopefully deter them.
Alongside strawberries, he’s managed to get a great range of things growing already: herbs, carrots, beetroot, strawberries, raspberries, capsicum, beans, peas, cucumber, chilli, spinach, tomatoes, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, lettuce, tangelos, kaffir limes, Tahitian limes, mandarin, nectarines, pear, apricot, and even honeydew melons. Wow, that’s a load of stuff.
We’d love to see how the garden progresses so do keep us updated Chris and send us some pictures of how things get on. That hard work has really paid off we reckon and there’s some nice ideas in the garden as well. We love that container below by the way. Cheers again Chris and good luck with everything.
He sent us a couple of tune recommendations. First The Wiggles covering Tame Impala.
And a bit of a classic from the production talents of Mikey Dread with Parrot Jungle.
And Fat Freddy’s Drop with Blackbird.
A big thanks to our good friend Rich R up in the Lake District for sending over the photograph of his cosmos (and a shout to Debby H too, as the seeds came from her plants). Rich writes, “Really cold here today, wind chill feels like 2°C. With hard frosts and snow on the way, I thought I’d better send you this pic of the cosmos before it’s too late.”
Brilliant stuff, Rich – thanks again (and to Debby H) for sharing!
Big thanks to Debby H for sending us a great picture today (above) of possibly the last cosmos of the year in her garden. She said, “If the weather brightens up later on, I will go out and deadhead them, then maybe they will keep on flowering.” Great stuff! We hope they do keep flowering.
Now we love the cosmos, we can’t stop seeing them about. Here’s one spotted on our early morning travels in SE23 this week, they’re a bit blurred but you’ll get the gist.
And a few doors down we saw a nice raised (vegetable) bed with some trellis used as a squirrel, pigeon and general pest deterrent, what a clever idea.
And from gardening we move onto the subject of music which goes hand in hand here on Weeds. We heard Skinshape x Horus – N’Téro (feat. Modou Toure) on last week’s Ross Allen NTS show here and it’s a lovely slice of reggae! Catchy as anything too.
Here’s a nice bit of dub called Order Dub for a Saturday night off the Self-Titled EP from Nadia McAnuff & The Ligerians from SoulNurse Records out of Tours, France from the golden year of 2022. It’s a subtle bit of mixing but lots going on if that makes sense.
And we just found by pure chance now on Bandcamp a do over of a version of Dennis Walks‘ Heat Don’t Leap by the one and only Gregory Isaacs called Gone is the Love from a good few years ago. Great tune!
And funny enough there was a few cuts of the original “Heart Don’t Leap” and more great tunes on On The Wire the other week. Listen in here!
Do you reckon the weather will hold out for gardening tomorrow? It was perfect here this morning and afternoon. Fingers crossed!
Weeds up to me knees 