More Midlands garden news

Thanks to Mike & Julia for sending some updated pics from their garden near Coventry. This time it’s cerise coloured sweet peas and pink poppies which were spurred into action with a bit of overnight midlands rain. They plants look like they loved those night showers.

And below are another few pictures from their Crete holiday. Cheers again for the ace pictures, Mike and Julia!

More cool stuff on the shortwaves

On Sunday 11th August 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations have yet another version of COOL, this time COOL 5 via Shortwave Gold. Like the last COOL shows, it’s summer vibes galore and tunes to listen to whilst on the sun lounger. Towels and suntan lotion at the ready please!

Then via WRMI on Wednesday 14th August 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz they’ll be bringing you a back to school special of KMART, your “official supermarket shortwave radio station”. Expect voucher give-aways, extended opening hours and the best blue light specials on the planet (*All subject to availability of course). Tune in and enjoy an alternative to shopping via the shortwave dial.

Meanwhile, back in the Midlands…

Thanks again to Mike and Julia for the pics of their back garden when they returned from their holiday. “We now have two sunflowers and those purple things in our wild patch are chicory. The flowers close up at night when the bees have gone home.” Brilliant Mike!What we love here is they’ve got an olive tree, called Olive (of course). She’s in the top laft hand corner of the picture and as Mike says “seems to be benefiting from the high temperatures”. Excellent!

And here’s a great rich coloured clematis and a “Ms Mars” sunflower, all looking wonderful. That’s it with holidays when you come back you will notice the difference in your garden.

Hey, what gives in Crete?

Cheers to Mike and Julia for sending us some excellent horticultural snaps taken on their holiday to Crete. It was mighty hot out there they told us and it’s something else to think that plants actually survive the intense heat out there. The pomegranite tree is looking great and one we’d love in our garden.

Do enjoy these great pics.

We think they’ll be a follow up to this post as Julia has taken a good few pictures and they all look great! The above is the crimson bottlebrush that we have in the front garden and hasn’t really done all that well this year and we imagined it was to do with the heat. Thinking about it, we imagine Crete is possibly on average, a little bit hotter than Forest Hill.

Great photographs Julia and we’ll do a part two in a couple of days time as they are all great. Thanks for sending the holiday pictures as it’s great to see what grows elsewhere in the world. Do send us your worldwide plant pics to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

We never knew that. Part 303

Reggae is one of those genres that if you think you know a little, you’ll always be suprised. By pure fluke we found the above tune from Ranking Toyan – Kill No Man whilst looking for another Toyan tune on youtube. We then remembered the horn version on the LP Aggrovators Meet The Revolutionaries we bought in a second hand shop many moons ago and used the title track on a “Radio Clarion Vs KDUB” shortwave mix. That thing called the internet can be great sometimes!

Big up the Echo Chamber on KFAI

A big shout out to our good friends across the pond Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss of the excellent radio show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. As we’ve said before, if you want to hear reggae, dub, downbeat and beyond, tune in from 8 – 12 UK time on a Wednesday morning here for a cracking good show. At around 37 minutes into the 24th of July show you’ll hear Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate” just before a lovely garden related tune from Sister Julie called Garden Binghi.

Have a listen to the whole show here as it’s wonderful stuff! Thanks again the good Doctor!

On the radio

On Sunday 4th August 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations have another version of COOL, this time COOL 4 via Shortwave Gold. Like the last COOL shows it’s all about those summertime tunes, 1950’s sun tan lotion adverts, deckchairs, long drinks and cool nights. If you’ve loved the last few summer shows you’ll love this one. Shortwave on, sunscreen on and tune into COOL.

Calling all the Skywatchers out there

A big hi to Rich R up in the Lake District for sending us this great picture yesterday. As he said “Saw this weirdness in the sky this evening. I wonder if such a phenomenon has a name?” We have no idea what it can be, anyone out there in Weeds land can tell us what it actually is? It really looks great and we have never seen anything like this before.

Is it someone messing around with a mirror or a ship of extraterrestrials landing from 60B, Who knows? Talking of the great planet 60B (the second planet from the sun Kruger if you have forgotten) here is for the millionth time is our favourite ever clip from youtube. You can’t get any better than this.

Who’d be a (radio) pirate?

Big shout to Jon at Coughing Pigeon on Brum Radio which is one hell of an eclectic show and well worth listening to if you like a bit of mix up from some acoustic chilledness, reggae, dub and all sorts. Thanks to Jon for playing a rough mix of Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate?” at 11.04 on the recent show of 19th July 2024 (below).