Category Archives: Wildlife

North London garden news

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A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of what’s going on at the moment in the plant pots and flower beds in her north London garden. The ornithogalum above and below has started to produce more flowers and looks great.

The pictures of the cosmos (below) in her last post here influenced us to run out and get a plant for ourselves. It’s now in a pot  and with its great flowers they’re a new favourite of ours here at Weeds.

The phlox and the sedum (below) are looking healthy too, unlike some of the plants in our garden. We’ve been doing a fair bit of watering here but there’s only so many times you can go up and down the garden with a watering can.

We stopped the hose a good few years ago after Gerry Hectic recommended a great episode of Gardeners’ World which was about conserving water which shamed us from using said hosepipe. What was funny we were going to get the hose out yesterday and when we unravelled the thing we noticed that the outside tap was stuck in the “Stop” position. Someone somewhere was making sure we didn’t use that hose!

The golden rod looks gigantic and the flowers are starting to open and the tomatoes are looking healthy too.

Cheers for the pictures Debby as they are appreciated here.

Hey, what gives in Crete?

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Cheers to Mike and Julia for sending us some excellent horticultural snaps taken on their holiday to Crete. It was mighty hot out there they told us and it’s something else to think that plants actually survive the intense heat out there. The pomegranite tree is looking great and one we’d love in our garden.

Do enjoy these great pics.

We think they’ll be a follow up to this post as Julia has taken a good few pictures and they all look great! The above is the crimson bottlebrush that we have in the front garden and hasn’t really done all that well this year and we imagined it was to do with the heat. Thinking about it, we imagine Crete is possibly on average, a little bit hotter than Forest Hill.

Great photographs Julia and we’ll do a part two in a couple of days time as they are all great. Thanks for sending the holiday pictures as it’s great to see what grows elsewhere in the world. Do send us your worldwide plant pics to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

We never knew that. Part 303

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Reggae is one of those genres that if you think you know a little, you’ll always be suprised. By pure fluke we found the above tune from Ranking Toyan – Kill No Man whilst looking for another Toyan tune on youtube. We then remembered the horn version on the LP Aggrovators Meet The Revolutionaries we bought in a second hand shop many moons ago and used the title track on a “Radio Clarion Vs KDUB” shortwave mix. That thing called the internet can be great sometimes!

Big up the Echo Chamber on KFAI

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A big shout out to our good friends across the pond Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss of the excellent radio show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. As we’ve said before, if you want to hear reggae, dub, downbeat and beyond, tune in from 8 – 12 UK time on a Wednesday morning here for a cracking good show. At around 37 minutes into the 24th of July show you’ll hear Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate” just before a lovely garden related tune from Sister Julie called Garden Binghi.

Have a listen to the whole show here as it’s wonderful stuff! Thanks again the good Doctor!

On the radio

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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.

Calling all the Skywatchers out there

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A big hi to Rich R up in the Lake District for sending us this great picture yesterday. As he said “Saw this weirdness in the sky this evening. I wonder if such a phenomenon has a name?” We have no idea what it can be, anyone out there in Weeds land can tell us what it actually is? It really looks great and we have never seen anything like this before.

Is it someone messing around with a mirror or a ship of extraterrestrials landing from 60B, Who knows? Talking of the great planet 60B (the second planet from the sun Kruger if you have forgotten) here is for the millionth time is our favourite ever clip from youtube. You can’t get any better than this.

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.

Play it again on a Tuesday…

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This came up in our youtube feed just and we’d forgotten how good it is. We love it even more as we imagine that the blokes in the band are standing on a platform at the Elephant & Castle railway station with the old London College of Printing building at the back of them. This is such a good tune! £25 on discogs and worth it, we reckon! Love a 12″ with an extended mix and a dub version too.

There’s a sheep in me garden what am I gonna do?

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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.