Category Archives: Wildlife

Calling all Wallies, calling all Wallies

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What with all this great weather we’re having at the moment, we’re reminded of the old free festivals that used to be about. Festivals like Stonehenge and Deeply Vale where The Fall used to love to play and also where The Ruts were formed. If you love all that free festival business have a look at this site here. It’s a brilliant documentation of when festivals didn’t have 30 or so big name DJ’s/Bands playing each day and where you weren’t searched for cans of Carling Black Label on your way in. There were certainly no artisan bread stalls and WI tea tents selling home-made victoria sponges in those days though there was some alternative home-baking going on. RIP to Wally Hope (above on flyer) who was a part of getting the punk band Crass together and the nude dancer William “Jesus” Jellett. There’s a great bit in Paul Gorman’s blog where “Jesus” is pictured dancing at an early Sex Pistols gig here.

Sort of related to all of this Free Festival malarkey, Imaginary Stations bring you WHPY this Sunday 18th June 2023 at 2200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHz via WRMI. They’ll be broadcasting a special programme live from the Skybird mobile studio van parked up in a free festival in a car park in the hippy haven of Woodstock. They’ll be a mix from One Deck Pete called “For all the Wallies out there” featuring tunes by Can, Bongo Isaac, Itekted and Dread I Benji, Emma-Jean Thackray and original Woodstock artiste Richie Havens.

So don your best 1970’s long afghan coat even in this heat, grab something strong to drink if there is anything still left in the communal fridge and play your imaginary recorder or shake a home-made tambourine along to the far out sounds of WHPY.

 

We wanted summer and we got it

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Blimmin eck! How hot was it today? These two poppies which we’re sure we grew from seed a couple of years ago are blooming again. We gave them a good watering this morning as at its peak it hit nearly 29 degrees C today here in SE23.

We’ve got two trusses of flowers on our tomatoes (above), the gardening calendar is cracking on this year and it’s nearly summer solstice. There’s now warnings or a time marker which says “You have just reached the end of spring” or anything, time marches on as Jungle Wonz once sang.

Also we’ve been nipping out any sideshoots on our tomatoes and read in the Vertical Veg email newsletter about using the sideshoots on tomato plants as you would cuttings and we have one which looks like it may have taken root, well it hasn’t gone droopy yet (above).

And something else we love here as well are suprises. Here’s some oregano we don’t remember sowing growing underneath a rosemary bush (above). Now that’s a bit of a bonus as we do love oregano here! We bought a marjoram plant a few years ago as an oregano alternative which is doing great but it’s not the same. 30 degrees C tomorrow you reckon?

Where am I? In the pond

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This morning we received our three logs of Barley Straw to sort out the murkiness of the pond. It’s an mad looking thing isn’t it? Very Patrick McGoohan! We won’t be worrying about any Rover type shenanigans as that netting we have to keep the Ladywell Heron out will stop it coming out of the water.

To all our friends across (and in) the pond

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Last Friday we tore open the box delivered to us by DPD and excitedly put our new solar powered pump into the pond that was looking a decidely wrong shade of green. Our old pump went for a burton last year and we decided to treat ourselves to a new one. After a couple of hours to fully charge up the battery the fountain was in full flow and we reckon the goldfish, the minnows and whatever else is in there are now a lot happier.

We’ve already ordered 3 logs of Barley Straw that is supposedly a great natural algae and green water treatment instead of throwing some chemicals in. We’ll keep you posted when we get them and take some pics and see how the water is looking like after a week or so. Supposedly takes three weeks or so to clean up the water but we were told you see results after a few days.

And we’re already seeing some flower trusses on the tomato plants grown from seed in the side bed that had a good load of leaf mould and compost put in earlier this year. It tends to dry out quickly but hopefully the addition of organic matter and a good watering every morning helps. How’s people’s gardens getting on? Do send us some pics as we’d love to see how things are progressing!

We don’t give to receive but it’s nice to

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Earlier this year we were very kindly given some Comfrey roots by our gardening friend Ruth as the plants we did have went to pot when the new fence got put in. Before then we were regularly giving out Comfrey liquid as it’s super stuff but as we had no Comfrey we had nothing to give out.

Those roots have now grown into a nice plant and we’ve been constantly pulling off the leaves and letting them soak in a old bucket with a little water and now have some great plant feed ready. Here’s the first batch we gave out earlier today (below).

As if by magic this afternoon we were given two very healthy looking pepper plants which we’ll be putting in the ground tomorrow. We’re great believers in giving out stuff to people and you never know, you may receive something out of the blue. Keep the old circle a turning as they say!

Bargains, bargains, bargains

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We visited Lewisham Lldl again this morning as per to get some £1.99 peat-free compost and nabbed these seed bargains too. Looks like they were priced according to the numbering on the packet. Anything that was 1 was 20p but we couldn’t spot anything, 3 was 49p and 4 was £1.49. Not bad! Get down to your nearest Lldl and grab yourself a bargain and as they say “when it’s gone, IT’S GONE!”

And talking of bargains, tune into KMRT this Sunday 28th May 2023 at 2200 UTC on 9395 kHz via WRMI. Expect some blue light and centre aisle 45 specials. We will also have a special appearance of someone you don’t know off the television from the 1970’s cutting the ribbon to open the doors of the broadcast. So tune in and grab yourself a great “once in a lifetime bargain”! All radios are on sale at 25% off while supplies last! (Subject to availability of course).

Job done (finally)

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And we finally tidied up the front garden after much putting off and excuses (“We haven’t enough bin bags”, “It looks like rain later” and “We’ll do it next week”. We reckon it may have been a good year and a bit since it had a good tidy up and it was so bad we got a few business cards put through the front door from gardeners, the shame of it.

It took us about 3 hours, steaming through it pretending we’ve been given a “job and finish” task from the council. Now we have a clean slate to think about what can go in there. We’re alright with doing the work once we make a start but it’s making that start…

Across the border

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We’ve had these plants in the soil for a year and a bit now and we are sure these are the penstemons we bought from QVC. Nothing happened last year and we were going to give up on them it now looks like they’re starting to give us a bit of a show. Here’s more about penstemons here. We’ve a few more of them dotted around the garden so hoping they all start taking off soon.

Here’s two tunes off the radio today. The first was heard on the excellent This is a music show (above) and it’s by Jackie Wilson and called You bought about a change in me and we don’t think we’ve ever heard it before even though it’s a bit of a classic and the B side of Reet Petite from a few years ago. It’s a tune! Cheers Your Host for playing it on the show. He’s right what he said that it put him in mind of The Supremes My world is empty without you.

And here’s something we’ve never heard before Sons of the Pioneers – Old Man Atom. Thanks to Justin Patrick Moore for linking us up to the Amsterdam Radio Collection (1991) on archive.org here. The track was played well speeded up on Maurice Di’s Happy Dirge Day recording at 19 minutes in. Crazy stuff!

And back to the garden, albeit the mad bit down the bottom, we’ve no idea what this wild plant is but it’s looking great and we reckon it came in on one of the Bees Bombs we got years ago or failing that a result of anarchic gardening, the scattering of seed from a random packet and hoping for the best.

We’re talking numbers here

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Big shout to Sam O for letting us know yesterday about this great video by Ringway Manchester of numbers stations used in popular culture notably ones used on musical tracks. To get around the issue of copyright Lewis (Ringway Manchester), lists the actual tracks and plays and names the sample used in said track. We didn’t know half of the tracks chosen and we do love a tune with a number station in it here.

Big thanks to Lewis for featuring two tracks from Madtone at 2.21, Calling Live on Channel and E3 both from the Garden of Earthly Delights session from 2006.

He’s done some great research with the video and above are a couple of tunes featured in it. He has many a good video on his youtube channel about number stations and radio based stuff as well, so do yourself a favour and have a good root about here. We’ve got a good bit of discovering to do ourselves there. Cheers again Lewis!

Is your cocktail glass half empty or half full?

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Put on that silk dressing gown, plonk an imaginary cigarette into a long and stylish cigarette holder, mix yourself a cocktail of what’s available in the fridge and sit back and enjoy the studio version of last night’s Skybird Supper Club Imaginary Lounge programme on WRMI. There’s some great chilled lounge tunes and a nice relaxed vibe as they say.

At 11.55 in is One Deck Pete with his Lounging on the shortwaves mix and here’s the tracklisting:
Godspeed – Nightcrawling  (Excerpt)
Monodrone – Solitary feeling
Dub Addiction – Ecological Dub (Calm Down Remix)
Gore – 06
Godspeed – Nightcrawling  (Excerpt)

Enjoy the show!