A couple for a sunday

Here’s something a little out there: a dubbed-out, globe-spanning tune from Free Soul School with Red Dragon. Ideal for those grey Sunday mornings when you’re not quite sure if the garden is calling or if the weather has other plans (clearing out the shed, perhaps?)

And a nice piece from Scientist & Dubiterian called Jah Light Dub from an LP called A Tribute to Augustus Pablo. Lovely stuff!

Guy Fawkes loved the reggae, loved the reggae

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On this Guys Fawkes night, a big shout goes out to our good friend Marc B for sending us the musical recommendation above, an NTS show from Dan Jagger Ball on Mixcloud. There’s some wonderful stuff on it including the first tune from the great Roy Shirley with the wonderful Music is the key on the Amalgamated label here.

On hearing Roy Shirley, we remembered a TV show in the Aquarius series from 1976 about British reggae (below) which we taped thanks to Max Betamax when it was reshown in the mid 1980’s. The great Roy Shirley is in it (with Rico on trombone) alongside other reggae greats including Aswad, The Cimarrons, Sir Coxson, Matumbi, Tito Simon, Ijahman Levi with an stripped down version of Jah Heavy Load, Geoffrey Chung, a star jumper or two and also Nicky Thomas who gives a sterling performance of What love is at 20 mins in at Chalk Farm studios (next door to The Belmont that must have seen a few reggae artists having a pint there) and ends with a clip from Count Suckle‘s legendary Q club in Paddington.

It’s a show well worth watching if you love a bit of time travelling and good music. Reggae, you can’t beat it!

A butcher’s around the garden

After a bit of rain last night in SE23 we viewed a few things this morning, the first being a small water lily on the pond. It’s been taken close up and looking again we’re still not sure what that is in the top right hand corner, micro frog spawn perhaps?

We’re seeing flower buds on the cosmos. We did sow a few seeds in various places but these are the ones that survived. There’re under an old dead cherry tree and they seem have taken well. In a few days there should be flowers (Cheers Debby H again).

And this look like a couple of the Thompson & Morgan seeds here. The above must be the Quick Fire Chilli Pepper to the rear and in front the Quick Snack Cucumber.

We’ve bought some plant feed now to supplement our ever dwindling amount of Comfrey liquid and with the supposedly 25 degrees C today, all should be the right stuff for these plants to grow well. Or so we hope!

Calling the world, calling the world

Here’s last night’s broadcast of Skybird Radio International which was beamed to Europe thanks to Shortwave Gold on 6160/3975 kHz at 9pm UK time.

There’s an hour of a mix up of music from around this globe of ours including a mix at 23.36 from One Deck Pete. Here’s the tracks which was played on the said mix:
Madtone – Diamonds in the sky (excerpt)
Unknown – Berceuse (off John Peel’s Archive Things LP)
Minyo Crusaders – Cumbia del Monte Fuji
Cyril Diaz & his orchestra – Taboo
Brno Radio Folk Orchestra – Cymbalom Dance (off John Peel’s Archive Things LP)
Sam Carty – Bird in hand

Enjoy!

There is a land far far away

Talking of RTM FM, a big shout to Jesse Yuen of the excellent North of the River Swan radio show (which is on a break for the time being) for sending us this morning some excelllent pictures of his parents garden in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia where he is at the moment. It’s a brilliant space and has some out there plants we could only dream about having here!

It looks a wonderful space and a lovely place for chilling out in! He’s sent us some close ups of flowers from the yard too. Great stuff!

And here’s the last North of The River Swan (until later this year hopefully) as Jesse (as it says on the mixcloud) “is taking some time off to recalibrate the compass and recharge the radio batteries”. Take it easy and we look forward to your return to the radio and to your shortwave debut. Cheer for the gardening pics, do send us more.

Quaking in our gardening boots about the weather

We watched the weather forecast on telly last night and the tall chap in the suit was a little unsure about what’s going to happen next week, “It will get colder and there may be snow or maybe not, even we don’t know”. We deduced from this it’ll be a good idea not to be too keen this weekend especially sowing something outside, so we’re holding our horses as they say.

Because of the cold weather today we decided to give it a miss even though we had some jobs to do out in the garden. We did have post this morning that cheered us up though, a small bag of Rocket early seed potatoes (If you want to know the different types of potatoes from earlies to lates explained simply, have a look here), some shallot sets that we’ll put in mid-March after this cold spell hopefully and some packs of seeds: spring onions (the variety Guardsman that have dark blue/green leaves), purple sprouting broccoli and some miner’s lettuce which we’ve never come across  before. More on the miners lettuce here.

Also a good mate of ours sent us a packet of Quaking/Quivering Grass seeds (top right hand corner of the above pic). They weren’t sure if that was the actually name of the plant or just the name the person who gave them the seeds called them. We checked on google, it did exist but it was only one of its names, it’s also called: didder, doddering dillies, jiggle-joggles and quakers-and-shakers. More on Quaking Grass or Briza media here. Do keep warm this weekend!

Skips are good, skips are good…

Big thanks to Mark Delaney at the Thompson and Morgan blog for the mention the other week on the garden upcycling tips post here. We repeat there is nothing wrong in looking in a skip! More on our love of rooting around in a skip from a few years ago here:

https://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/sfts-19-sounds-from-the-south-take-me-im-yours

Eyes down for spudulike

CSSG Potato day 2016

Thanks to Mick from the Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group for getting in touch about their 7th Annual potato day on Saturday 13th February 2016 at Commemoration Hall, 39 High Street, Huntingdon PE29 3AQ.
It’s from 11am-3pm, with refreshments and a craft stand and more, all for FREE. How good is that? They’ll have over 60 (count them!) varieties of spuds alongside onion sets and shallots. What’s great is people can buy how little potatoes (10 grams or less) or large (as many kilos as they want) at £1-00 a kilo.
If you’re organising a potato day or even a seed swap (if it’s in London even better so we can go!) and you want us to mention it send us an email with all the details to onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com
There’s a mention about potato days and seed swaps in our Sounds From The South podcast from a couple of years ago below.

Sunday morning nightmare

squirrel thiefWoke up at the crack of dawn this morning and went downstairs to make myself a cup of tea to bring back up to bed. Looking out of the kitchen window I was greeted with this little sunflower seed thief.

Rather than bang on the window I laughed, and had to admire the nimble robbing git! I’m sure this is the same one that had the bud off another sunflower two years ago (post here). A description has been taken and the details passed on to the nature police.

We’ve had more than our fair share of trouble with squirrels in the past and one instance is covered in this Sounds From the South podcast from last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqoIU10Izwc

The image has cracked

Piggot on a spiggotOn the way home from work tonight I walked past some stuff in the street outside a house. There was an old portable TV set and a couple of prints of famous jockeys on horses in broken picture frames. Beside them was a note saying “Take Me” on it.

A few minutes later, I passed a woman with a very heavy looking rusty iron clock-face about 6 foot high. The woman was leaning against a wall well out of breath, waiting for a cab as she couldn’t carry the clock-face to the bus stop. She told me she’d won it off ebay for £6.50 and had just collected it from the seller. My thought was “and much will it cost you to get it home?”

These two events made me think of one of our Sounds From The South episodes from christmas last year called “Take Me I’m Yours” about finding stuff in the street or on a skip, a subject that is dear to our hearts.

All of our other Sounds From The South podcasts are archived on i-tunes here or Stitcher here.

https://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/sfts-19-sounds-from-the-south-take-me-im-yours