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.

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

The ISS goes round and round, round and round etc

Space station 2015 It’s that time again! The International Space Station is back around these parts, and can be seen up to five times a day if you’re feeling hardcore! I’ll be out in the back garden joining the slugs and snails over the next few nights, stumbling into the flowerbeds while looking up at the night sky!

For viewing times, stick in your location here or download the ISS Detector app for your mobile. Also if you want to get a bit on the deep tip, check out Heavens Above for all sorts of stuff to tilt up your head up at the night sky to.

Also here’s something ISS related from our sounds from the south podcast from last year. One small step for mankind and all that!

No tunes pon the iTunes

SFTS ITunesWant to know what happened when a council worker met a Sex Pistol? Or when a seagull stole a leaving card plus ten pounds in shrapnel at work? Would like to know more about the origins of the aggressive Peckham Parakeet? Or how about, tips on watching the International Space Station from your back garden while supping a glass of vino? or Why we love our seed tins?

Well, our “Sounds From The South” podcast aired on The Dirt on Fab Radio International last year has all the answers to the above and is now on i-Tunes. Give it a couple of weeks and all episodes will be up there and do look out for new ones coming very soon! Due to copyright we can’t put on any of tunes featured but there’s links to them in the shownotes. Tap in “Sounds From the South” into the i-Tunes store or at the link here. Subscribe, my gardening friends!

If anyone is keen on sending us their tune-age in a ambient, downbeat, dub or reggae style and don’t mind it being featured on the podcast if we like it here, drop us an email to onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com.

All that’s on are damn repeats…

A big Boxing Day shout to all gardeners! Just to let you know the first series of our Sounds From the South feature on Fab Radio International‘s The Dirt are now all up online on Soundcloud.

There’s a load of garden related babble and a whole lot lot more. Log on and drop off!

Chucked out for the binmen OK*

Row fisherman* Sung to Crass’ “Banned from The Roxy”

Here’s a nice fish related object found by my wife outside a house thrown out for the binmen this week. This’ll look great by the garden pond!

There’s a connection with the fish and this week’s Sounds From The South on The Dirt‘s Christmas Special this Monday night from 7-9pm on Fab Radio International. Tune in live here and turn on (man)!