Category Archives: Tips for happy gardening

A little whistling bird told me so

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to Spike from Morschen43 for sharing more photos of his garden in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. He was trying to take a pic of his apple tree and didn’t seen the blackbird on it that just didn’t move, so giving him a super picture and whistled a great tune as well!

Here’s some assorted photographs of the plum tree and some blossom around the garden. Spike certainly has a great looking garden and home!

And thanks to Spike, we heard this tune on his last Vampirefreaks radio show. It’s from Sidarsen and called Des Millards (from 4.51 mins in). It’s 18 mins long but it really is a bit of a hypnotising /strange one.

Here’s what Spike’s weekly radio show is all about: “Vampirefreaks is a show primarily focused on rock/punk but also covering the world of reggae, ska, dub, metal, hard rock, and sometimes hip-hop.” So if you love that stuff, tune in!

Cheers again to Spike for playing this tune as we’ve never heard of this before and for keeping up to date on the gardening tip. Keep those pictures and reports coming Spike!

It all seems to have started up north

Posted on by
Reply

A big thanks to Debby H. for sharing an update from her north London garden! While we sowed ours directly outside this year and are still waiting for them to pop up, Debby’s cosmos are already starting to flower even though the plants are still small (see her photos above).

It’s great to see that her seed potatoes are finally breaking through. There’s some really healthy growth on them already.

Elsewhere in the garden, the rhododendron is also blooming beautifully.

As she mentioned “The bluebells are still lovely, although unfortunately not the native ones” (above).

The garden is looking great at this time of year as well, what’s it going to look like later this year? We can’t wait to find out, keeping sending us the updates Debby!

Getting ahead of it all

Posted on by
Reply

Of late we’ve had some lovely days and then days of greyness and a little rain. Even if we don’t, the garden likes it and is starting to bolt ahead. The clematis which has taken a few years to establish itself is now doing well (above).

We were thinking had we put the potatoes in too early, but we cover them at night (and on cold days) with fleece and left over plastic and they seem to be doing alright. We will start earthing them up as we go along, as there’s nothing as bad as pulling up your potatoes and finding a load of green ones. We know that’s a long way off yet but it’s good to plan and prepare! Fingers crossed there’s no surprise frosts to come.

Dave didn’t get in the way

Posted on by
Reply

Good to hear from Mike & Julia, just outside the parish of Coventry for getting in touch again. Mike mentioned that they had a bit of trouble from Storm Dave up there the other day too, “It’s a bit feisty up here.”

He went on to say “We’ve been busy getting a new patch of the garden ready today. Here’s the before and after shots. Still some work to do but you get the general gist. Slabs and bark and a veg trug and some old metal storage tins with flowers added.”

Great for sending the pics over as the patch looks great! We look forward to seeing how the garden grows up there and do send us more pics as the year develops. Here’s a good post with some nice pics from their garden last year here.

We love interval signals

Posted on by
Reply

Further to our last post about interval signals, cheers to our mate John F for sending this interval signal over on Facebook from Radio Tirana, Albania (above). Simple but effective like all the best interval signals, and we’ve just found out it was a trumpet version of a tune called With Pickaxe and Rifle. Blimmin’ eck!

That got us thinking of another old one, this time from Radio Prague, which was recorded off the shortwave and put on an LP by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Here’s a live version with an orchestra, shortwave noise and a vocal through a megaphone.

Our friend Kit G5KIT from Bristol got in touch and mentioned this excellent one from Radio Berlin International “The one I heard most as a kid”. Cheers Kit, now that is a classic!

And a favourite tune of ours from years ago that had an interval signal sampled on it, was  Rephazer‘s Interval #1 from his excellent Interval Signals set here. Here’s a Madtone re-edit of the track with a Jasmine Tutum vocal over the start as a bit of an exclusive for a shortwave mix a few years ago.

Through researching this post we have rediscovered a clip of the late great Holger Czukay listening into shortwave radio from1984. It don’t sound like any intervals signals are contained here but it’s such a good clip it has to be aired again.

There’s a great collection of interval signals here from the SWLing Post article and on this classic site here. Have you a favourite interval signal? Do send them to us here.

Just to end, here’s a lovely classic musical box/ice cream van type interval signal from HSW Bangkok Meteorological Radio (supposedly a version of “Wandering The Plains” from the Nintendo game Super Mario World). Big shout to all interval signal fans all around the globe!

An oldie but goody

Posted on by
Reply

We don’t usually go back in the archives for mixes but found this one by accident this evening. One Deck Pete‘s “Bouncing off the ionosphere” mix which was transmitted on Free Radio Skybird via Channel 292 on 6070 kHz on 8th December 2019.

Tracklistings:
UKDD & Spoonbeats – It’s time to tell you
KoKo – keep down
Maxime Tisne-Versailles – Roi De Plaines
AMY Root – Elif(OIJ_remix)
Ernest freeman – Live it up

It’s been years since we’ve heard these tunes especially the wonderful Maxime Tisne-Versailles tune Roi De Plaines. Sometimes those old ones come back to haunt you.

 

It’s nice today but not nice enough for ice creams

Posted on by
Reply

An excellent dub from Gregory Morris of Johnny Osbourne’s/Makka B‘s Cease Fire. A great tune for a sunny spring Saturday. And here’s the vocal.

Weather report from the lakes

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been damp and overcast down here in SE23 today so the gardening we were planning to do was confined to repotting some seedlings indoors. Thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for letting us know about the weather up there. “Still some snow on the hill tops this week. Biting winds but lovely sun and it’s light until nearly 6.30pm.” Great stuff Rich and ta for the picture, we can’t wait for spring.

A canna lily in north London

Posted on by
Reply
Thanks to Debby H for getting in touch with a great picture of her canna lily and don’t it look grand!
She also let us know that she sowed the first of her cosmos seeds a couple of days ago and she’ll let us know when they start showing up. As she said “It’s a bit early to sow them, but it’s an experiment!” We are always up for gardening experiments here. Saying that most of our gardening experiences are experiments.

Well it looked smaller on the website

Posted on by
Reply

We popped to B&Q this morning to get a container for a newly aquired mimosa plant that we can’t decide where to actually put it in the garden. One in a pot may be good and can be moved around until we find the right spot. The pot was bigger than we thought!