A frosty reception this morning

It’s always the way, awoke to a frost this morning (above). Typically a couple of days after planting the elephant garlic out under a thick mat of leaf mulch. We reckon we may have lost them but let’s see if they survive. That’s the trouble with gardening, just like life you get good days and bad days. We’ll update you about the garlic.

At lunchtime we got some plug plants through the post, some White Foxgloves off ebay (below). Expertly packed or what? They’re not going out just yet even though it said on the supplied notes they can be overwintered in a cold frame. Possibly, but they’re staying on the windowsill for a couple of days before we can knock up some sort of cold frame-like structure with protection outside in the garden. We’re talking an old piece of glass on some bricks or something, it won’t be pretty but it may work. Trouble is we don’t want the plugs to get too comfortable indoors even though they’ve probably come from a greenhouse before being posted.

And below is the latest episode of Imaginary Stations, KBUS which was broadcast last night on WRMI (also home to This is a music show and Radio Northern Europe International). The show’s theme is travel which features all sorts of eclectic goodness as ever featuring this tune below by Wesley Willis “Harmony Joy Bus Ride” which we’ve never heard of, shamefully we’ve never of the artist before either. We must do some more research on Wesley Willis as he was an interesting fellow by all accounts.

And at 43 minutes in on the show is One Deck Pete’s “Where’s me travel card?” mix.
Here’s the tracks:
John Harvey – Automated Announcement, Platform 7, Shewsbury station
Ceramic The Band – Tickets, Please
Tabasco Driver meets Delroy Wilson in Dub
N&L – Metropolis
Inteus – Angry Bus Driver
Phil Pratt – Safe Travel
kK4P M3TR0 – NEXT STOP – Riverside – Town Creek

Fingers crossed those garlic bulbs survive!

Music for Eno’s waterlogged garden

A big thanks to our good friend Gerry Hectic who just forwarded on a couple of musical recommendations this wet Saturday morning. The first is on a KBUS tip from Psychic Temple with Music For Bus Stops. It’s a great jazzed out groove with a bassline that reminded us in parts of Human League’s Being Boiled. One for supping a large of mug of tea to whilst looking out of the window.

The next is a crazy dubbed out track called Strange Times At Roswell High Dub by the X Ray Cat Trio from “Leeds, England” (as Cowboy Joe would say, 6 minutes in here). Play this whilst putting on your gardening footwear when having to pop down the garden in the pouring rain when that kitchen waste container is well overflowing and a compost heap visit is a must. By the way supposedly better weather tomorrow.

Rainbows over Forest Hill

Before it started to rain today we made a start on the wild bit at the bottom of the garden. The soil was well wet so was hard to turn over and it was mucky to say the least but we got there after about three quarters of an hour at “council worker on job and finish” breakneck speed. There’s still a little bit at the back to do but we did leave a couple of wild plants in and left in the corner some stinging nettles (good to stick on the compost heap and for adding to comfrey liquid for added goodness) and a bramble plant as Blackberries are always welcomed here. Top tip: sometimes when we know the rain is coming we quickly give an area a light going over with a fork just scratching up the top layer and it looks a million times better after the rain!

We also left our cut price budget version of the brilliant wildlife ponds that Bill Shimmers makes. As we’ve said before his ponds are a work of art! A great idea to do and Bill’s ones look brilliant.

Ours sadly is a wee bit lower budget (an old tub from B&Q and some old wood) than Bill’s but we have to start somewhere!

Little and often they do say

The weather turned out to be good again this morning so we decided to do another short stint of weeding out the back. We did it at a council worker’s “job and finish” speed as we honestly don’t know when we’ll be able to get out there again what with the weather and also returning to work tomorrow.

We managed to collect up a lot of leaves from the path so per the advice given to us by the people who supplied us with the giant garlic we’re using the leaves as mulch in the raised beds as we haven’t got 4″ of grass clippings as suggested. Reckon we’ll be okay with leaves? We’ll find out in the spring.

We also took a lot of rotting leaves off the netting over the pond that was being weighed down and going into the water. We’re sure that rotting leaves ain’t that good for the pond (have a look here why they’re no good) and it is looking a lot clearer now. Roll on the next time we can get out the back!

This post was written whilst listening to this excellent collection of hip-hop instrumentals by N&L from Norway from 2015. Some good tunes here!

And they’re not interested in Amateur Radio then?

On the radio this evening is a transmission celebrating shortwave radio by the Imaginary Stations crew. It’s broadcast at 2300 UTC on 9395 kHz by WRMI and is called Kearsarge North Transmission Service (KNTS). Expect some ham radio/shortwave themed music, numbers stations and Ionosphere Jazz. Here’s more about the transmission tonight:

At 15.43 into the show there’s a shortwave inspired mix from One Deck Pete featuring tunes from Shortwave Sounds, Kwook, Jodey Kendrick, Yomakomba and a shortwave exclusive of a remix of Nocturnal Emissions by Madtone. After the transmission a recording of the show will be available on their mixcloud site here.

If you’re mad about shortwave radio tune in tonight and if you haven’t a shortwave radio tune into 9395 kHz in AM mode here.

Come out from behind the Psyche-cle shed

The first part of the Shortwave Garage Sale (The psyched out special) in The Imaginary Stations series which was transmitted last week on WRMI is now up on Mixcloud in all its studio glory but sadly missing all the fades and the remix by the ionosphere.

At 02.05 minutes in is the mix from One Deck Pete called Live from the Psyche-cle shed. Here’s the tracklistings to accompany the tripped out mix:

Kourosh Yaghmaei – Hajme Khali
The Dandelion Set – A Clean Sweep
Tim Maia – Over Again
Soul Vendors – Psychedelic Rock
Şatellites – Disko Arabesque

And whilst you’re there check this out!

And thanks to our good friend Zdenko Franjić for sending us the below. What a track!

Meanwhile back in the garden…

This week we bought six giant White Elephant Garlic from a nursery in Wales off ebay. We’ve been growing Garlic for a few years now and never seem to get the size that you do in the shops, so we thought if we bought some giant variety and even if we weren’t successful and got half sized giant ones we’d be happy. They are some size though, Yorkshire teabag for comparison

On the ebay site we bought them from mentioned you can eat the scapes (the tender stem and flower bud) too. “Chop into pieces and sauteé in butter or oil for about 5 – 6 minutes and serve like a green bean or add to salads and stir fries. Roast or BBQ the scapes whole and serve like garlicky asparagus with an ailoli dip or just some balsamic and olive oil.” You learn something new every day! Here’s some good tips about growing Garlic here.

Much more music…

This morning we were happily reminded of a tune from a time gone by from Dimitri From Tokyo/Paris called Love Love Mode (Disorient) which we heard on an early episode of a regular mixcloud programme we’ve been tuning into recently called the Catface Show.

The show is presented by Bob Catface and the shows are 30 minutes in duration featuring a great mix of downtempo and all sorts (and we mean all sorts) of great music. Well worth a listen! Link to it here.

The numbers station disco connection

A record came out of the blue here for no reason at all this evening, the excellent New York Shine On Me! off the Ambient House (The Compilation By DFC) LP which we first heard on the John Peel show.

It’s a lovely acid tinged number with a driving kick drum made by someone called Aqua Regia (a chap called Akin Fernandez) originally released on Akin’s record label Irdial Discs. Little did we know at the time there would be a shortwave radio connection and also one with The Ritchie Family of “The Best Disco in town” fame as it was only tonight in the comments of the youtube we discovered the sample. You learn something new every day.

Another release on Irdial:

Good vibes on a Friday night

Whilst researching a shortwave radio mix for the Imaginary station WREN – Renaissance Radio we came across Memotone out of Bristol on Bandcamp. There was some great music on there including a haunting track from a chap called O.G. Jigg (Willl Yates/Half Nelson/Memotone) called Earth MemoriesOn the shortwave mix we went for the 0808 version which like the original is short and sweet but oh what a tune! One to listen to while doing a windmill on a sheet of lino on the top of Maiden Castle upon a solstice eve.