Category Archives: Wigwam of the month

Custodians of the cosmos

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Cheers to Debby H for influencing us here at Weeds to grow that plant with a lovely flower called cosmos. We’ve only got one flower on ours at the moment (above) but we’re not complaining, as it is November.

We had a daft idea here, to make 2025 “The year of the cosmos”. So next year we’d love to see lots of cosmos pictures and we could even do a cosmos from around the world feature. Spread the word to “Make the cosmos come alive in 2025” (and boy do we love a cliche here!)

And here are 3 great cosmos tracks:

 

 

Now here’s a view!

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Cheers to our man in the Lake District Rich R, for sending this wonderful picture from when he visited Hawes in North Yorkshire last week. As he wrote “This is on the main street!” Blimmin’ eck, what a view. Beats the usual McDonalds, Asda and the like and imagine that as the view out of your front room window. Excellent stuff Rich.

Who says dahlias are boring

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Big thanks to Mike G and Julia (Ace photos as usual by the way Julia!) for sending pictures of their wonderful dahlias that have been loving the decent weather up there near Coventry for the last two days. The black dahlia (above) is really something else!

The one above is another favourite of ours, a classic of dahlias! And as for the orange one below… We’ll be buying some tubers for the spring, we will.

And these pictures have given us an excuse to repost up an example of that rare genre called dahlia dub from Madtone called A dahlia state of mind.

And another dahlia themed track this time by Asta Hiroki.

And a final one by Jean-Michel Serres.

More Midlands garden news

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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!

Meanwhile, back in the Midlands…

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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.

Who’d be a (radio) pirate?

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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).

More guest gardens

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Cheers to Debby H for sending us some great pictures of her garden again. We’re loving the ornithogalum which has just started to flower. As she said “Hopefully this is the first of several” and we hope so too!
“The golden rod is amazing. It’s about 6 foot tall. The flowers are nearly ready now.” They are looking good. She’s been away in France for a few weeks and is just managing to get on top of the weeding. That’s it what with the weather we’ve been having, rain then sun, sun then rain. The weeds love that sort of weather they really do. “The slugs got all my rudbeckia that I planted out just before we left, the dahlia disappeared too.” Those slugs eh?
“On the other hand, the cosmos are doing well. The flowers seem larger than last year, perhaps it’s all the rain!” The cosmos do look nice, they’re an attractive flower. We’ve only grown the annual version a few years ago and they came up great and then we forgot to sow them the year after. Sadly they didn’t self seed.
“We planted phlox last spring. It didn’t do much last year but it’s starting to flower now.”
All things in garden are sadly not all rosey as the pear tree (above) is not very happy though and there doesn’t look like there’s any fruit coming on it this year sadly. As well as little black eggs on the tree, which she’s sprayed a few times, she also had to treat it for rust. We wonder what is up with the pear? The strawberry patch looks very healthy though!
Thanks again Debby and do keep sending us these updates as the garden is looking great.

You say zuchinni, we also say courgette

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It’s going absolutely crazy in the vegetable patch at Justin Patrick Moore‘s back yard in Cincinnati. Our good friend from across the pond and author of the fine book The Radio Phonics Laboratory (out now from the Peckham based Velocity Press here) has sent us some pictures of his vegetable plot. Look at the monster zuchinni plants (above) and the present harvest (below).

And as for the green beans and the corn (and the current harvest in the fridge) look at the below. It’s funny as our zuchinni (AKA courgette or baby marrow over here) and green beans didn’t get past germination stage or if they did, the “no holds barred” Forest Hill slugs had them.

Usually with zuchinni/courgettes we have a glut and there’s only so much you can do with them. There are ways around that glut though, we’ve tried this chocolate courgette cake here and here’s a great idea from Justin’s wife Audrey.

An open sandwich called Yvonne.
Put sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, and spinach, black olives if you like them, seasoned with garlic, pepper, basil and melted swiss cheese on top that you ladle over toasted bread. Add a splash of soy sauce to your taste. Sounds great for those zuchinni gluts and your own gut too.

And (above) look at this for a self-seeding/volunteer zuchinni in his garden too! What went on with our seedlings I wonder and usually our normal plants don’t even get as big as this.

And as for a tune, Justin picked this one from Tim Curry funnily enough called The zucchini song. Cheers again for the pics and recipe idea Justin and here’s more on his great book here:

I don’t want to be the prisoner

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A few weeks ago at 7.30 am on a Sunday morning we were strolling around Brockwell Park in the parish of Herne Hill with extreme toothache (don’t ask). It was a lovely sunny morning at the height of festival season and the council workers were out in force on an overtime spree collecting litter (Sunday morning working is double time aka “Double Bubble”). A mini-moke passed us with a balloon tied to the back of the cab and Patrick McGoohan and The Village immediately came to mind.

On catching up with said vehicle when one of the operatives was taking a leak in the bushes we excitedly said to the driver “We love your truck with the large balloon attached to it. Please tell us you have watched The Prisoner.” Sadly he didn’t know what we were talking about but it did make us smile and made us forget about the toothache for a while.

Pic above: The Prisoner mini-moke with Rover on a beach which looks very much like Camber Sands. The same place where reputedly Public Image Limited ended up on a “Punk Jolly” when they should have been at Birminghams ATV studio’s for their debut appearance on Mickie Most’s Revolver show.