Category Archives: Wildlife

From east Asia now in south London

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Thanks very much to Adrienne N for sending us some pictures of a great looking bleeding heart plant (above). It’s one we’ve seen before but never known too much about. What’s interesting is that she has tried growing the plant multiple times in the soil outdoors, but it always dies after one season and has had more luck growing it in a pot. The flowers themselves are great (close up below).

After a little bit of research on the web, we found out the bleeding heart belongs to the poppy family which is odd as it looks a bit fuchsia-like if anything. It’s native to east Asia (including China, Korea, Siberia, and Japan) and is quite hardy too. The plant tolerates drought and is fire resistant. Now that is mad!

One thing we also did read about the plant is “All parts cause stomach-ache if ingested, the foliage may aggravate skin allergies. Wear gloves and other protective equipment when handling.” More info about the perennial here. We just remembered that there was a picture of a bleeding heart in Mike & Julia’s garden a short while ago here. Thanks for the picture Adrienne as it’s one lovely flower!

More from north London

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A big thanks to Debby H who sent us some pictures of how things are getting on gardening wise in north London. First are the cosmos (above) which are looking healthy. Those inner toilet tubes seem to be working well as plant pots by the way.

And above are the tomato seedlings which are sown in an interesting way as we usually sow one to a pot, but this method seems great. The tomatoes as well as the cosmos are ready to be repotted, and Debby has given us a great idea for further sowings.

Above is the azalea in her garden is looking great. As she wrote “I just found that the azalea is a type of rhododendron.” We didn’t know that.

And Debby has just got back from a break in Suffolk. “By the coast near to Dunwich the whole area was covered in the most amazing yellow flowering gorse bushes” “It went on for miles. I have never seen it looking quite so spectacular.” Brilliant stuff Debby, cheers for the update and we look forward to more pictures this year.

Some pictures from Sicily

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A big thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us some pics from his break in Catania, Sicily. The first is of some well interesting wild flowers (above). We’ve looked on plant.id and it says the plant is called lantana. What a great looking plant.
The above is Taormina railway station (above) and there’s more about it here. It’s one stylish train station.
Below is the view of Mt Etna from his hotel in Catania. Cheers for sending them over Rich and hope you had a great time over there.

We’re the tomatoes in the dustbin

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In a post the other day here we were discussing our impatience about putting tomato plants outside in the garden. Yesterday we saw a Facebook post where someone down here in London had taken a picture of their tomato plants outside in the garden with “Now there’s a good job done, all of my 30 odd tomato plants are outside in the ground. I doubt if there’ll be a frost now…” Looking at next week’s weather, it looks brilliant during the day and not too cold in the evening so we’re now even more confused than ever.

We had a plant on the kitchen windowsill with two flower trusses begging to go out and today we gave a broken council food recycling bin a good clean out and put a few holes in the bottom and now the two trussed plant is in it and up near the house. It should be well hardened off anyway and tonight it’s covered in bubble wrap just in case. It’s one less plant on the kitchen windowsill.

Above is the food recycling bin with the tomato in it and funnily enough it fits in with the other plant pots including one of the cuttings from Honor Oak Park station geraniums (we now think they are really pelargoniums) which is now flowering!

Shout to all the twin cities reggae radio crew

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A big shout to our good friend Dr Strangedub who presents The Echo Chamber (with DJ Baby Swiss ) on KFAI out of Minneapolis, Minnesota for playing Jasmine Tutum & Madtone‘s Earth Citizen on this morning’s show at 37mins in (tune in here).

As we have said many times before, the Echo Chamber is the show to tune into on a Wednesday morning at 8am UK time for 4 hours (count them) of reggae, dub, downtempo and all sorts of bass heavy stuff and more. Cheers again Dr Strangedub!

And here’s a great track from the show called Don’t worry what the people think about you (Dub) from Dubblestandart & Jasmine Tutum.

A report from Bristol

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Thanks to Kit, G0JPS in Bristol for letting us know he did a bit of garden clearance yesterday (Easter Sunday) which included “removing a huge tangle of cleavers (if the name isn’t familiar, you’d know what they are straight away when you see the picture of them) and the sad deceased remnants of a fuchsia bush.”

“Found this nice little sectioned off bit (above) under the wreckage; so gave it a good hoeing, sowed it with foxglove seeds, and rehomed a small thyme plant rescued from a supermarket car park. And pinched your idea of sticks and things to keep the cats off.” Brilliant Kit, we love your choice of metal sticks and wood that will keep the cats and probably the foxes off too we reckon.

He added  “Thinking that it’s a bit of a blank slate now, the words Tabula Rasa popped into my mind so here’s a couple of tune suggestions:”

They are two excellent tunes that we’d never heard before. The first is Tabla Rasta who were from Crete with Mystic Dub and Brother Dan from Sweden with Bay Leaf and Thyme Dub. Excellent musical recommendations Kit, do keep them coming!

When it’s spring again, I’ll bring again, Tulips from Warwick-shire

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Thanks to Mike & Julia for these great pictures (it’s Mike taking the photographs this time) from a Tulip Festival in Warwick the weekend just gone. We know there’s many festivals dedicated to the Tulipa genus in places like Holland (even though their origins are native to central Asia, as they thrive in extreme hot summers and harsh, cold winters) but we’ve never thought they’d be one in Warwick. By the looks of these varieties, looks like it was a good day. Cheers for the photos Mike!

And we knew there was a variety called John Peel, we’d never thought they’d be one called Rasta Parrot, but there is!

The (non) Frost report

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Things are looking good in the garden, the clematis (above) is flowering profusely this year after a couple of years of not doing much. We once heard on Gardeners Question Time if you threaten a plant with a “final cut with a pair of secateurs” it can do the trick but it’s not something you want to do as it doesn’t seem right. Nature just did its thing with the clematis.

The bottom part of the garden has now vegetables starting to germinate (the sticks keep the cat out) even though the home-made plant labels have the touch of small gravestones if viewed at the right angle.

And we remember the late great Joe Maiden mentioning on the BBC Leeds gardening programme many moons ago that Good Friday is traditionally when you plant your seed spuds. These cara potatoes are starting to sprout now, and we’ll be earthing them up as that hopefully will keep them protected if there is a threat of frost over this weekend.

Happy Easter everyone and we hope you get the Easter eggs you desired. There was a bloke we worked with once when asked what he thought of Green & Blacks 70% chocolate and “quality” chocolate he replied, “I’m a cheap easter egg bought at the local market type chocolate person myself, none of that posh stuff, real chocolate”. And on that note…

A tune for a good Friday

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We’ve just finished another shortwave mix and being on the ball as ever, just discovered a genre called rebajada where DJs play cumbia tunes at the wrong speed for better effect. Sounds like one of those happy musical accidents (just like Ruddy Redwood forgetting to leave a vocal off, hence dub). Here’s the origins:

“The Rapson (soundsystem) had been playing for six or seven hours non-stop,” “The motor overheated and started lagging, and that’s when the rebajado sound came out. The music slowed down dramatically: the voice in the track deepened like in a slow motion scene, the accordion notes stretched out and there was more space between each scrape of the guiro. People kept dancing, captivated by this new sound.”
mexiconewsdaily.com/culture/cumbia-rebajada-monterreys-accidental-music-genre/

We found the tune above Manzanita – Paga La Cuenta Sinverguenza from Peru played in a rebajada stylee and it’s a tune.

And here’s the original. Crazy stuff!

There’s a downside to being a bit keen…

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We’ve spoken to a few gardening friends of late who have tables, windowsills and even parts of rooms filled with seed trays and seedlings galore now waiting for the chance of frost to pass so they be planted outside. We reckon another few weeks and these lot we have indoors (above) can go out. There’s even some flowers forming on one of the geranium cuttings we took.

We’ve even got a tomato plant with a truss of flowers with another forming and a nearly three foot, giant sunflower on the windowsill (above). It’ll be like the day of the triffids if May don’t come soon, it really will. For everybody in the same boat, hang in there, it won’t be long!