Category Archives: Jobs to do

I don’t want to be the prisoner

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A few weeks ago at 7.30 am on a Sunday morning we were strolling around Brockwell Park in the parish of Herne Hill with extreme toothache (don’t ask). It was a lovely sunny morning at the height of festival season and the council workers were out in force on an overtime spree collecting litter (Sunday morning working is double time aka “Double Bubble”). A mini-moke passed us with a balloon tied to the back of the cab and Patrick McGoohan and The Village immediately came to mind.

On catching up with said vehicle when one of the operatives was taking a leak in the bushes we excitedly said to the driver “We love your truck with the large balloon attached to it. Please tell us you have watched The Prisoner.” Sadly he didn’t know what we were talking about but it did make us smile and made us forget about the toothache for a while.

Pic above: The Prisoner mini-moke with Rover on a beach which looks very much like Camber Sands. The same place where reputedly Public Image Limited ended up on a “Punk Jolly” when they should have been at Birminghams ATV studio’s for their debut appearance on Mickie Most’s Revolver show.

And solitaire’s the only game in town

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“Honey bees get all the headlines” so it says on this great bee hotel/bee Air B&B seen by Guys & St Thomas’ Hospital the other day.

We waited about in front of the accommodation for a few minutes waiting for some insect action but sadly didn’t see anything but it’s a great idea to have a bee hotel. When we got home we collected some hollow sticks and plant stalks and stuck them all in a nice pile at the back of the wild bit but it isn’t anything as smart as that one.

For more information on making a bee hotel/mansion/bungalow/two up two down and why it is important to have one take a look here.

Wild wild wild youth

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The wild bit at the bottom of the garden is starting to colour up a bit. We originally put in some seed bombs a few years back, things got a bit messy the season after and then we bought some various wild flower seed for shade and woodland and just bunged them in, in a anarchic gardening style. We’ll buy some more off ebay next week and see what it brings to the (plant) party. Any good ideas when it comes to wild plants for the shade?

There’s also a few mini ponds in between the plants made out of all things including large margarine containers and even an old slow cooker pot and they’re well disguised now but still good for wildlife. We think all gardens need a wild bit somewhere. If you look closely you can see the bucket that keeps the comfrey liquid a brewing in with an old bathroom tile as its lid near the compost bin. For God’s sake, don’t lift off that lid!

Sensible footwear please

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Seen today on our travels, a sign about the dangers of flip-flops which made us think about preferred gardening footwear. What’s yours?

We know people who garden in sandals, flip flops or even slippers and we here have probably been guilty of all three at some time or another but you can’t beat a good pair of “steelies” (Steel Toe Caps with the toe caps showing for that authentic council worker look) when using that mower as you have to watch those toes. Please take care and keep your feet from the mower as the sign says!

It’s been a long time…

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We obtained our new flymo yesterday and after a quick cup of tea got to work starting on the overgrown lawn in the back. After a cut and a rake and a couple of repeats we got the lawn down to an acceptable level. We even included a wild triangle at the top. The flymo certainly got a baptism of fire yesterday, no hard feelings lawn mower.

 

This is a dawning of a new era

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Looks like we’re getting a new lawnmower tomorrow so we’ll be cutting the grass as soon as we assembled said device. We’ll be cutting all of it in the front and about three quarters of it in the back, keeping a bit wild as per. We’ll be waiting outside at Argos tomorrow at 11am tapping our imaginary watch if we see a member of staff through the window and will be mouthing “It’s gone eleven, it’s gone eleven”.

Sophisticated frost protection for beginners

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Here’s an example of one of our cheapskate frost protection schemes in situ in the bed at the bottom of the garden. We’ve got a couple of split bin bags down to keep the weeds out and the soil warm, an old vase, some glacé cherry containers and an old plastic cloche we found in the street years ago. They may be not look pretty but they will hopefully work to keep that damn frost out!

Thank goodness, there wasn’t a frost last night. Now the SE23 weather forecast has changed a bit, tonight is still supposedly going to be 5°C, tomorrow 9°C and from Friday night to Sunday night there’s lows of 3°C during the wee hours. So the protection will be back on for the next few nights and of course be taken off during the day if it heats up a little like when the sun came out today for a couple of hours.

We’ve seen online all sorts of frost protection from old clothes, net curtains to random bits of fabric draped over bamboo canes in a teepee. It’s not about what it looks like more about if it’ll work or not and what you have at hand, punk rock style.

And here’s a nice chilled tune made by a punk rocker so it says on Bandcamp, it’s from “Dan Rincon, longtime drummer of the prolific psych-punk band OSEES’” and the tune is called MotorRhythm, Wooden and it’s a good one if like us, you like a bit of out there downbeat.

A bit of improvisation

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The weather doesn’t look that great tonight, what with a forecast low of 4 degrees C. That’s the trouble with this time of year, we get a little bit of sunshine over a weekend and we think that the garden is under starters orders.

We’re a bit paranoid here, so we went out earlier and put what jam jars and a couple of plastic cloches that we had over some plants. We even improvised using those little plastic containers that glacé cherries come in, put over some small seed potato shoots. Let’s see how we get on with these tonight. Tomorrow isn’t looking good at 3 degrees C either so we reckon we’ll be putting them back on tomorrow too. It’s better to be safe than sorry as they say.

And just to add to the drama while we were out the back we were treated to a short hail storm. That’s all you need when you’re running about the garden at dusk covering random plants with glacé cherry containers and jam jars, what must the neighbours be thinking?

From our north London correspondent

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A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of how her garden is getting on now that we are on the cusp of spring. The bluebells (above) look great and the strawberrries (below) are now starting to flower.

We don’t use nets on our strawberries here as we only have a few plants dotted about but it is a great thing to keep the birds and other fruit eating pests off them. Apart from a little big of slug damage to a dahlia in her garden, things are looking are looking good. Great to hear that the peonies in the garden are doing well too. We’ve got one that was overshadowed by a shrub nearby so we gave the offending shrub a good haircut and because of having more light getting to it, the peony is doing much better now.

There’s some good stuff happening indoors as well which is very interesting. The cosmos seedlings we featured here a fortnight ago are coming on a treat!

If you remember, Debby just used the whole dead heads from last year’s plant that were just scattered and covered with compost and the seeds weren’t initially separated. They are looking great! Saving your own plant’s seeds are a great way of gardening on an economical tip.

Also Debby told us “The rudbeckia has germinated although it is still tiny” and “the 12 tomatoes are gradually growing very slowly”. Our tomatoes are the same and have even thought to start another batch off as they are so slow. Usually at this time of year we have a few very leggy tomato plants ready to go out but then again we didn’t start them just after Christmas as we usually are tempted to do.

Thanks for the pictures Debby and we look forward to seeing how things progres

Tulips from Lew-is-sham

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Yesterday we popped into that shopping emporium Lewisham Lldl and spied some gardening bargains. There were various variety packs of mixed summer bulbs and corms and we picked this one which was “Flower Masses Collection” for around £6. No idea if it is an actual bargain or not, but there’s 40 bulbs in there including one dahlia that went in a large pot near the house with a transparent plastic bag over it to keep any cold weather out. Also there’s some gladioli, lilly and african corn lilies that went in the ground probably a bit early but these things burn a hole in our pockets and we’re far too impatient to wait until the risk of frost is over sadly.

The bulb planting reminded us of a daft story from the Westminster City Council Gardening days that was covered in the Sounds From The South spot that we used to do many many moons years ago for the gardening programme The Dirt on Manchester’s Fab Radio International (show below). We wonder where Watford Mick is now?

There’s also a silly episode about when a gardener met some of his punk heroes in his council regulation Donkey Jacket here.

Best of luck with the weather and happy gardening over the bank holiday break!