Thanks to the catalogue of the wonderful Canary Records out Baltimore, Maryland for the Night Owl Polka from the Frank Gutowski Trio. You’ll be clapping along and shouting “Hey” in the right places before you know it as it don’t get much better than this. Do check the rest of their releases for some very interesting tune-age.
A crazy, crazy LP by Gaudi from London found by accident on Bandcamp while searching for some tunes for a forthcoming shortwave mix. This wonderful track is from Gaudi with Adrian Sherwood with Dub out of Theremin. The great Adrian Sherwood is on top form here!
Last week we received some pictures of local vegetation from our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv, Ukraine spotted while on his daily walk. We sadly haven’t got much knowledge when it comes to foraging but would love to know more about wild plantlife.
As for the picture Wlad sent above, these here are the same flower aren’t they? Those were seen a long while ago in the Welsh countryside (here). As far as we know from a comment posted at the time from our friend Jan, they are Yellow Toadflax. More on the plant here. Thanks for these pics Wlad as they are interesting viewing.
We’ve also just heard from Rich R in the Lake District saying he left the garden for a week and those Fox and Cubs have taken over and are a foot tall. Crazy stuff! Wild plants eh?
Here’s last night’s broadcast of Skybird Radio International which was beamed to Europe thanks to Shortwave Gold on 6160/3975 kHz at 9pm UK time.
There’s an hour of a mix up of music from around this globe of ours including a mix at 23.36 from One Deck Pete. Here’s the tracks which was played on the said mix:
Madtone – Diamonds in the sky (excerpt)
Unknown – Berceuse (off John Peel’s Archive Things LP)
Minyo Crusaders – Cumbia del Monte Fuji
Cyril Diaz & his orchestra – Taboo
Brno Radio Folk Orchestra – Cymbalom Dance (off John Peel’s Archive Things LP)
Sam Carty – Bird in hand
Enjoy!
Even though this growing year is far from over, every year is one of learning for us in the Weeds garden. Even if it’s the old “We won’t be growing that blimmin’ thing again” after a particulary bad crop, we’re always learning. We’ve been loving our trips to Lldl for the peat-free compost and the cheap seeds of theirs and learnt that peat-free compost needs a little helping hand with nutrients but it isn’t that bad for £1.99 and you can transport the bags easily on the bus.
This year we tried spuds in pots and bags which worked, even if they were small on the actual harvest, the chillies in pots are doing just fine (above) and the giant garlic turned out great too. We don’t usually have much sucess with garlic to be honest but we’re happy of the normal to larger garlic (instead of giant) which is now hanging up in the loft to cure (pictures to come). Most of them didn’t divide into seperate cloves so something else was learnt this week: “Garlic needs 30 nights at less than 10C over the winter for the cloves to develop properly. If this doesn’t happen, then you do just get one fat onion-like bulb” Alys Fowler mentioned that here.
And after trying a good few times it’s only this year that we are actually getting some oregano growing in pots. We imagine it’s not that hard to grow it’s just that we haven’t had much luck in the past and the time we went to Shannon’s to buy a plant they didn’t have any so we bought the marjoram instead. We’re well chuffed with the two straggly plants we grew from seed, it’s good being easily pleased.
Over the last few days the Cardoon up near the house has been expanding on its neat purple tufts. We don’t grow them to eat but for their great punk rock-like hair arrangement. Talking of the loveable spikey tops, the other morning on Bandcamp we read a great piece on Crass and Anarcho Punk (here) and there was a nice quote from Penny Rimbaud “Crass said that there is no authority but yourself… You know, live your life, find your own garden, and then share it.” We love that quote!
Crass played Birmingham once and the story goes they brought their own PA, support band, fanzine stall etc making it a great DIY event. The only let down of the night was that the beer at the gig was awful. That led to a rumour that the band took the DIY ethic to the nth degree and brought a load of their own home-brew to the venue. We doubt that very much as how much beer would they would have to transport from Dial House in Essex up to Birmingham to keep a few hundred punks happy? If only Crass did produce their own lager. Imagine how good the graphics would be on the bottles/cans too?
Another plant we don’t use in the kitchen is Marjoram. We originally bought a plant from Shannon’s as we thought it was an alternative to Oregano and it’s spread like crazy. The bees and all the other winged insects that flock to it in the hot sun certainly love it and it’s well worth having in the garden to keep those insects happy and the masses of flowers look great too!
It ain’t The Good Life but we’re starting to get some more edibles out of the garden. The shallots are small but we’re getting a lot of them, that’s the first Zuchinni/Courgette (above) and the chillies are really doing well and there are a good few on the plants. As a good gardening friend of ours said a long time ago “Keep picking the fruit and cutting the flowers and more will come”.
As for our anarchic seed sowing style we have a Cardoon up near the house from when we broke open a seed head and just chucked the seeds around the garden. There are better looking Cardoons up the road but we ain’t complaining especially as they’re from free seed.
And as for the Barley Straw in the pond it does now look like it’s working and been working for a while. The fish seem happy and you can actually see them now!
Last weekend’s transmission of Imaginary Stations (the show that features music you probably won’t hear elsewhere on shortwave) is now up on Mixcloud. This episode is the station COOL “Cool tunes for Summer moods” featuring some music that evokes sunshine even though London last weekend wasn’t experiencing much of that.
23 minutes into the broadcast in is a mix from One Deck Pete called a “Seven Inch Single Summer Special” featuring
Earl Brown – Get Together
Stereolab – Miss Modular
Freda Payne – Unhooked Generation
Anthony Johnson – Zuggi Zeng Version/Roots Radics Dedication To Flabba Holt 2 Martel Robinson – Follow you
So get out in the garden, perch yourself on a deckchair, stick some headphones on and blast the show for maximum pleasure. “Summertime and the living is easy” as Our ‘enry once sang.
This morning we knew it was going to be stormy later today so went out early in the morning to put the couple of garden brolleys on their sides and then spotted that a couple of branches from the tree next door were precariously being held up by the fence. They had been blown down in the night and we didn’t even hear any wind and thought all of that windy weather was happening later today (which it did).
About an hour later it was all sorted and everything looked safe and back to normal and the bed below had a lot more light on it than before. Sadly we lost some trusses on one of the tomato plants perched below and god knows if it will survive. You can’t win them all!
And after all the excitement this morning here’s a tune to cheer us up from Minyo Cumbiero called Cumbia del Monte Fuji. There’s a nice dubbed out syn drum middle bit here too. What a tune!
If you’re about the shortwaves this Sunday 16th July 2023 (with a radio or an online SDR here) there’s a couple of programmes that may interest you if you like the eclectic. The first is KNTS (Kearsarge North Transmission Service) from the Imaginary stations crew beamed to Europe via the services of Shortwave Gold in Germany at 2000 utc (9pm UK time) on 6160 khz. 
Expect lots of shortwave, radio related sounds and even some tunes with CW (that’s morse to you and I) and at 15 mins in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete. If you haven’t a shortwave radio tune in here.
Then later at 2200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHz the great Shortwave Music Library returns via WRMI. DJ Frederick digs through his across the board record collection taking a few requests, pulling out some tunes and giving them an airing over the shortwaves. Sit back and relax with a COOL drink and turn that shortwave radio back on. If the batteries have been taken out of the shortwave radio by the kids you can always tune in here.
Weeds up to me knees 
