Category Archives: Jazz Gardening

Give me some signal!

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A big shout to Justin Moore in Cincinnati for getting in touch with Weeds and sharing with us some pictures of his back garden and forwarding some tune recommendations. Justin came to our attention a couple of weeks ago via the SWLing Post Blog where we read his excellent piece called “Holger Czukay, Radio Wave Surfer” here (well worth a read!) He’s a lover of good music (with an across the board taste), writes a fine blog here and is interested in, and broadcasts on, the wireless (hosting a radio show and being an active radio amateur). At the present moment he is presenting Trash Flow Radio on WAIF 88.3.
Justin’s back garden looks like a very nice space (it puts us for some reason in mind of St Stephen’s Gardens in London, W2 where we used to work for the council years ago), it’s very shaded because of a huge oak tree but he and his partner (she’s the one with the green fingers says Justin!) still manage to mainly grows herbs and a grape vine. (Pic above) lemon balm and lavender. We love a bit of lemon balm here, we got some seeds years ago, they came up, they multiplied and the plants are now going mad!
We’re loving the grapevine growing on the fence (above). Hopefully later we’ll be getting more pics including next year the veg patch out the front and the houseplants doing well indoors. We don’t have much luck with houseplants funnily enough. A good source of info when it comes to houseplants by the way is Jane Perrone’s excellent podcast On the Ledge here.

And as an addition the above are some pics of Justin’s radio shack and music listening room, we do love all of that kind of stuff here!

Justin also passed on three excellent tunes, the first being from a chap we’ve never come across before but sounds well up our street, sound artist Nigel Ayres aka Nocturnal Emissions. This is from “Nocturnal Emissions in Dub Volume 1” called “Bodmin Parkway (Disintegrated Public Transport Mix)” and features station announcements that will bring out the trainspotter in you. Tune!

The next is on the darker tip by Lustmord “the originator of the “Dark Ambient” genre” so it says on his bandcamp here (there’s also a PTV/Throbbing Gristle connection too). This is nice stuff with some Tubby’s bleeps stuck in for good measure. More off the album here.

The next (another tune we haven’t heard of) is by Dubcon called Black Hole (Martian Dub Beacon) from an collaboration between cEvin Key (Download, Skinny Puppy, PlatEAU) and Twilight Circus’ Ryan Moore. Lovely out there stuff! Is that Black Uhuru’s Michael Rose on vocals? More on the album here.

So a big thanks to Justin and we await more pics and tunes!

A David Rodigan multiple choice question

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Question 4. You have four videos to watch of the great reggae DJ David Rodigan. Which one would you watch first? (5 marks.)

A. As Inspector Forbes in Sherlock Holmes.

B. Versus Love Injection in Birmingham in 1998.

C. In the excellent BBC documentary here featuring Dennis Bovell, Jazzie B and Don Letts and lots lots more.

D. Live in Jamaica a few years ago*.

You have two hours to make your decision. Lighter!

* Especially from the dance sequence at 3.51 till the end. We’ll have a pint of what he’s on!

An antidote to the common cold pt.36

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Alter Echo & E3 meet Ishan Sound & Rider Shafique – Ah mi guide (Egoless remix)
This corker of a tune was first heard on Steve Barker’s On the Wire the other month and thanks to Scotch Bonnet records it’s available now. This tune cuts the common cold stone dead!

Yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch!

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Big shout to the Thompson & Morgan blog for publishing the lovely “Thompson & Morgan’s little book of garden wisdom” and what’s more you can download it for FREE from here.

It’s a great resource for all gardeners be they novice or experienced, right from the first chapter “Gardening tips for beginners” it’s full of brilliant tips and ideas. As we’ve said before gardening is such a wide spectrum there’s always something to learn.

We can relate to it; “”Nobody gets it right first time” says Kate of Diary of a Country Girl blog”, yes we can just think back to the time we were faced with the back end of a large rodent in the compost bin after previously putting some salad leaves into it (that possibly had traces of meat on them). There’s stuff about looking after your soil, tool care, fruit & veg, container growing and a whole lot more. Big shout for Thompson & Morgan for producing a informative read! Get yours now here.

Sometimes you need some Eremurus in your life

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We were particularly excited last week when we acquired another White Foxtail Lily from Shannon’s. We were so enamoured by the plant that we even named one of Madtone’s new tracks after it (see last post).

It’s the bizarre starfish-shaped root crowns that do it for us, family members have gasped “Urghhhhh, keep THAT away from me” and have also remarked “they’re disgusting” when we’ve showed them the crowns. We here really appreciate the root crown’s oddness as you know we love something a bit “out there” here at Weeds! The tweet (at the top) from Shannon’s from a few years ago still makes us laugh.

We’ve lost a couple of plants over the years as we don’t think they like our heavy clay soil here in London. As the plant originates from the dry grasslands of western and central Asia it prefers a free draining soil and when awakening in the spring the early leaves don’t particularly tolerate the frost. We give the bed a good bit of preparation before putting it in, mixing in some organic matter to help with the drainage.

It’s a very bizarre sight when the plants starts to kick into life in the spring. Over a few weeks you can see the thing drilling up through the soil and reminds us of the film War Of The Worlds when the monsters from outer space start to wake up. Sadly, the plants don’t look like those monsters that have the hoover-like tentacles though. Now that would be interesting!

It’s brilliant when leaves explode out of the soil and then the fantastic flower head a couple of months later. No-one talks about how odd they are then do they? Leave the Eremurus alone! We love it here and will bring you updates when it pops up in the spring. #FoxtailLily #Itcamefromouterspace

Well you live and learn!

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Gardening is such a massive subject it’s impossible to know everything. Even if you know a bit there’ll always be a bit more you can master. Why not get back into the classroom (or learn from home or in the great outdoors) and undertake a gardening course. As well as learning new stuff there’s a good chance you’ll meet like-minded people who may turn into future gardening friends (Hi Scarlett!)

There’s all sorts to choose from including the varying levels of the RHS certificates, gardening for beginners and seed saving workshops and then there’s the loosely gardening-related courses like foraging and bee-keeping. The courses go from the cheap to the expensive so there’s something to suit all pockets. If money is on the tight side there are free courses about or ones that are as cheap as chips, they just take that bit more effort to find. We’ve also seen courses at various community gardens that are free, all you have to do is help for an additional hour with some small gardening chore in exchange. A favour for a favour and all that!

A few years ago we did a couple of free courses at a local city farm. The first was making a herb garden in a window box type planter and the second was worm composting in the city for beginners which was well informative (above is our wormery made from a bucket cadged from the local butchers not long after the course). The herb course even came with a free planter with a great selection of free herbs to choose from too, talk about a bargain! Have a look online (tap in “free gardening courses” on google, facebook or twitter) or in the local press. Community groups, local allotments and gardening charities may be good to contact about free courses too.

Another free way of learning is on the web, the BBC has a series of great informative gardening guides available, from growing fruit and vegetables to the basics of soil here. Well worth having a look at!

If you hear of any good courses on the cheap or for free do pass them our way and we’ll blog them here. Best of lunch with your gardening studies!

 

 

Seed saving and other stories

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Cheers to our good friend Marc B for letting us know about a feature which was up our street on BBC’s Gardeners’ World this week about a “seed guardian” in Wales called Adam Alexander.  It’s excellent stuff to watch and it’s on i-player here episode 22 at about 25 minutes in. Have a look at Adam’s blog too (here) as he’s an interesting chap to say the least and has loads of advice on growing stuff, collecting seed and a lot more!

Talking of saving seeds and the like here’s news via @freedomseedbank of a great free event at the Skip Garden Harvest Festival on September 22nd at the Skip Garden, 1 Tapper Walk, London N1C 4AQ which includes a seed saving workshop explaining amongst other things “the theory and practice of saving seeds” which sounds great stuff. For more information and to book pop to their eventbrite page here.#saveyourownseeds

We thought we lost you

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We were feeling sad at Weeds HQ earlier this week as we thought the forty odd quid solar fountain for the pond we bought a couple of years ago had died on us. There was no light on the control panel and it looked like that was it a goner.

Today we gave it one more chance and laid the solar panel directly in the sun for a few hours and the thing shot back into life later in the afternoon. The battery was as flat as a pancake. Salute to solar power! By the way the goldfish bought from Lewisham’s “premier” pet shop are still there but went a bit camera shy when this photo was taken (don’t worry that pesky Heron hasn’t had them!)

Three tunes and a lemon verbana tea please

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It was through a facebook post of Haji Mike from Cyprus a few years ago that we learned of the great lemon verbena. The fragrant herb grows well in our parts too but you have to watch it in the winter as it’s not too hardy. This year for the first time we even noticed some flowers on it. The best thing about the plant is the lovely zingy tea made out of a few fresh leaves (more on the tea here.) And to accompany a cup of the stuff here’s three tracks in a downtempo breakbeat style.

The first is Paraiso from ANF on the NAFF label (it certainly ain’t!) out of Canada, nice stuff indeed! The next is a great one from I-Cube/Oeil Cube called XXXX (Abel’s edit) that I’m sure we may have featured before and slightly puts us in mind of another top tune Barbara Mason’s Another Man. 

Finally we have a corker from Skeleton Army called Touch on Killer Smile which after a couple of plays has wormed it’s way into our brains. Love the music maker’s moniker origins (see here) and love the tune! Three to wind down with!