Flowers at the end of May

Thanks for Debby H for getting in touch again and sending an update. She has just sent us a picture of her Zephyranthes Robusta and said “Each year, I store the bulbs in the garage over the winter. In late spring I bring them out and they grow again. Isn’t nature wonderful!” It really is Debby!
And what is fantastic is she has attached a picture of the first flower on one of her cosmos plants. How wonderful is that for May? Cheers Debby!

Heading to the moon on a friday night (on a 60 plus travelcard)

 

We were compiling some tunes for a space leaning shortwave mix and came across this belter of a dub. It’s off a set called Moon Dub EP by Invadread. The track is by Baodub and called Dub of the moon and it is one catchy dub and has a touch of the Keith Levine’s in there and a bit of a Doctor Who vibe somewhere. A tune!

Another moon themed tune…

As the lyrics go “Neil Armstrong the first human on the Moon and the Pan Afros the first men to play the tune”. Brilliant!

A pictorial gardening report from near Coventry

A big thanks to Mike & Julia from outside Coventry for some snaps from their great garden. As before we are going to let Julia’s brilliant pictures do the talking, and there’s some wonderful stuff here as ever. As Mike said in his email “Things are happening in our garden”. They certainly are!

Cheers for sending these pictures over and may your garden carry on looking great for the rest of this year!

STOP PRESS: Julia has just come back with the plants featured in order as in the blog post. Thanks Julia!

Allium
Salvia – hot lips
Alstroemeria
Geums with wallflowers in front
Geums with a lupin type bush which I have never seen before and am not quite sure what it is
I think it’s a penstemon
Yellow poppies and geranium

More from north London

Thanks to Debby H for sending us an update today. Above are the Marconi Red peppers and the dwarf sunflowers (below). “These are the plants from the house in the next street to ours” and the plants looks healthy. The peppers have a few flowers on one of them as well.
Below are the peonies in her garden (below) which have great looking flowers! We’re only at the start of the growing season and the garden can only get better. Cheers Debby, thanks for sending the updates!
The weather looks like a bit of rain later this week by the way so they’ll be another growth spurt out of our plants in our gardens we reckon.

Radio connects us all

Cheers to Kit, G0JPS presently on a boat on the Grand Union Canal who told us earlier he was listening to the “Alt Universe Top 40” on 9670 kHz on his XHDATA D-808 portable. As he reported: “Lovely reception. Hot Butter’s seminal track, “Popcorn” is currently playing.” Brilliant stuff Kit!

Then around the same time we heard from Debby H who picked up a couple of pepper plants from a few streets away (there was a mixture of plants on a wall with a sign “please take me” on it) and guess what one of the varieties was called? Marconi Red. Radio (and gardening) connects us all!

Tunes for a Thursday night

Thanks for Vintage Obscura Radio for putting this up on their bluesky feed and what a tune. It’s from Fadoul aka Bob Fadoul and it’s called Fi Jamique. Yes it is a familiar rhythm (None Escape the Judgement) but it’s a lovely take on it! And there’s more!

More from Tallinn

We’ve just heard from The Rhythm Doctor who sent us some pictures of wild garlic last post. “We saw this strange flower the other day in the same area as the garlic”, it turns out to be the common toothwort.

Turns out the plant is a bit of a parasite “The genus produces no chlorophyll and parasitises host trees, often hazel, beech and walnut, to acquire nutrients” more here. Cheers RD that is one strange looking plant!

Local news

Thanks to Penny Golightly, here’s news of a great little plant mart in Lee next Saturday May 17th from 2-4 p.m. outside 2-6 Micheldever Road, Lee SE12 8LX and the event is a fundraiser to get money to plant more trees in the area. There’ll be a wide range of plants for sale at a good price as well as lots of other stuff (cakes, books and CDs, cream teas and 2 botanical watercolour workshops at 2.30 and 3pm). Looks great! Cheers Penny!

They Could Have Been Bigger than the Beatles

At 2.58 above is a tune that made us smile this week while putting together another shortwave mix for Imaginary Stations. It’s called Beatles and the MBE from Lord Short Shirt & The Silhouettes and even if you’re not keen on the Fab Four this’ll cheer you up.

Out with the bubble wrap, out with the bubble wrap!

Sometimes it’s small things that make you think. We were just reading the “What to do in the garden in May” piece on Penny GoLightly’s excellent blog here. She mentioned “The month has started with a mini heatwave, but I’m not rushing to plant out most of my seedlings too soon” and we have a bit of a realisation and checked the weather forecast for SE23 and thought “Ahh, she has a point”.

Its looks likes there’s going to be a little bit of a change in temperature this weekend to say the least. From those glorious summer vibes to a humbling 13°C tomorrow. Funny enough we just found a pic (above) from May 17th 2020, look at those sophisticated forms of frost protection and thats in mid-May!

To be honest we did get a bit carried away and put a couple (and more to be honest) of tomato plants out and yes there are some chillies seedlings that have been repotted and left out overnight. We’ve even dismantled a cold frame (aka took the bricks off holding down the polythene and folded up said polythene and chucked it in the bin). Looks like all of that will have to change this evening, alongside the flip flops and shorts going back into the wardrobe.

We’ll be bringing the chillies in tonight just to be on the safe side as it may drop to 4° C and we have a massive roll of bubble wrap purchased initially for selling stuff on eBay that will come in very handy.

We feel a bit sorry for the bloke on Facebook the other week who put out all his 30 odd tomato plants saying there won’t be a frost. He may be alright, but it does seem a bit nippy in the evenings next week. Good luck and may the (frost) protection be with you and enjoy those rays of sun rays today as you may have to put the jumper back on tomorrow.