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.
Thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a pic of a woolly intruder in his back garden the other day. We like the look on the sheep’s face who could be thinking “What is this human doing in MY field?”
One advantage is there’s a good chance that may be some sheep droppings left which could be a pain in the neck but looking online it looks like they’re high in both phosphorus and potassium which is great for the garden. Just like the classic horse manure it has to have time to age (as it’s far too strong and if used straight away would burn the plants) and you can even make a compost tea out of it to apply to the garden in liquid form. We’d suggest a thick pair of gloves if you intend to pick some up this weekend. Cheers for that Rich! More on sheep manure here.
This morning whilst on an early morning mission to Deptford we caught this poster in a pub window. It’s for Wednesday’s May Day celebrations featuring an appearance of Fowlers Troop and the Deptford Jack in the Green (more on them here which even includes a Hawkwind and Pink Fairies connection!)
The great John Rogers has got a interesting little film that explains the celebrations a little more. Looks like a fun day!
All this talk of May Day revelry reminded us of one spring evening years ago when we were going to London Bridge station and followed a man dressed as a tree walking with a lady who was sporadically ringing an old school bell. We made a bit of a detour so we could capture more of the madness and just before we turned off for the station we had to see what it was all about. “Excuse me mate, could you explain more about your get up” we said to the tree man/man tree to which he curtly replied, “Mayday?” We were told that day and by a bloke with a painted green face.
And talking of John Rogers, here is again the two part excellent walk of the “Magic” River Quaggy, which is a “much watch”.
Here’s two great tunes for a Tuesday evening to drive any chance of the frost away.
The first is a lovely middle eastern-inspired mix of an Adrian Sherwood live track. It’s a wonderful piece of instrumental reggae called Sinnervisions from the great Spy From Cairo who makes some brilliant music that we have featured before and this one is really up there! More about his stuff here.
And from 2015 from Blackboard Revision we have Blackboard Horns from Lee Scratch Perry, Danny Boyle and Danny Red. Wonderful horns with some fantastic bass!
And here’s another track or two from each of the artists for good measure!
This device above may not the most sophisticated of gardening devices but that old window frame found on a skip many moons ago perched on some bricks is working well as a cold frame.
A few weeks ago we thought we’d chance it with a couple of seed spuds under it and today noticed that they are starting to show through. We put a liitle bit of soil around them (a mini version of earthing up so to speak) just in case a frost decides to show itself. Hopefully in a few weeks we should be in a frost free zone and we’ll take the protection off for good, but until then…
Soundtrack to this post: Big shout to Thomas from the excellent Explorations in Dub for sending us this track out of Poland called Streams of bubbling dub from Muflon Dub Soundsystem and a nice chilled bit of dub it is.
And through the Explorations in Dub blog here we found this great Maunsell Tower dub related track from Banco de Gaia called My Little Country (Rob Bong’s Roughs Tower Dub). Big shout to all the Sealand crew! We do love a seafort here and we are a bit partial to dub too so it’s a winning combination. Cheers again Thomas.
Even though this growing year is far from over, every year is one of learning for us in the Weeds garden. Even if it’s the old “We won’t be growing that blimmin’ thing again” after a particulary bad crop, we’re always learning. We’ve been loving our trips to Lldl for the peat-free compost and the cheap seeds of theirs and learnt that peat-free compost needs a little helping hand with nutrients but it isn’t that bad for £1.99 and you can transport the bags easily on the bus.
This year we tried spuds in pots and bags which worked, even if they were small on the actual harvest, the chillies in pots are doing just fine (above) and the giant garlic turned out great too. We don’t usually have much sucess with garlic to be honest but we’re happy of the normal to larger garlic (instead of giant) which is now hanging up in the loft to cure (pictures to come). Most of them didn’t divide into seperate cloves so something else was learnt this week: “Garlic needs 30 nights at less than 10C over the winter for the cloves to develop properly. If this doesn’t happen, then you do just get one fat onion-like bulb” Alys Fowler mentioned that here.
And after trying a good few times it’s only this year that we are actually getting some oregano growing in pots. We imagine it’s not that hard to grow it’s just that we haven’t had much luck in the past and the time we went to Shannon’s to buy a plant they didn’t have any so we bought the marjoram instead. We’re well chuffed with the two straggly plants we grew from seed, it’s good being easily pleased.
Here’s a quick update to the last but one post featuring Jesse Yuen‘s parents garden in Perth, Western Australia. Cheers to Jesse for sending us an update of what he’s listening to on the Hi-Fi at the moment.
This mix from Aussie producer Cousin is a great eclectic mix up:
Also Paul St. Hilaire’s – Tikiman Vol.1 is on heavy rotation
And this local reissue of 90s dub/downtempo tunes is also getting frequent spins. This is some nice stuff by the way!
Cheers Jesse for sending us some nice recommendations that we’re going to explore further.
A big cheers to Your Host of This is a music show “The finest second-hand vinyl finds only on shortwave” for alerting us to this tune from The Romeos from an LP called Precious Memories which was played on the show the other week. There’s is something about this tune that grows on you!
And the heat in there is impressive too! Look at the build up of brandling worms at the bottom. We’ve just seen on the web you can buy them, 100 for £11! All we did is put a wet piece of cardboard down the bottom of the garden. Two days later, worms! Thanks to the great Bob Flowerdew for that! #theuniverseinthecompostbin
It’s funny how the days all melt into one during lockdown but certain days bring certain pleasures. Yesterday we spotted our first courgette/zucchini flower even though the plant was sown very late as the ones we sown earlier amounted to nothing. We’re going to be keeping this one watered and fed a lot so we can get some decent fruits.
And after a delve into the compost in the raised beds (making sure any small marble sized spuds were covered over as they turn green in the sun making them poisonous) we got a nice amount of small new spuds!
And we found these two fibreglass tubs in the street to be chucked out for the binmen. They’re about a foot high and needed a wash and a lick of grey paint (which we found in a half opened tin under the stairs, we didn’t even know we had it) and they are as good as new. There you go, something good to report in lockdown!
#gardeninginlockdown #lostandfoundinlockdown
Weeds up to me knees 