Category Archives: Wildlife

Baby, it’s cold outside

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It’s cold as cold here and it’s time for a good tune to warm up those slippered feet. It’s the original version of Ijahman Levi‘s classic Jah Heavy Load from the grand old year of 1976.

We can’t find the dub of this but the tune in its full glory is played at 2 minutes in on this “recorded straight off the Medium Wave in glorious mono” of John Lydon on BRMB (261 Metres) in interview with Robin Valk from 1979 complete with a european station breaking through in the background with really adds to the recording. A great listen by the way.

Here’s a later released version of the tune with a excellent dub which we really want here. Keep warm out there!

There’s good in their hearts

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Big shout to Real Seeds out of Pembrokeshire, Wales for having their heart in the right place. We were in the process of ordered some great chillie seeds from their website here the other day when we noticed that they did a great deal for the low income/unwaged gardeners with a subsidised seed pack for £10.50 containing all sorts of good stuff and well worth looking at if you’re finding cash hard at the moment.

As we loved growed those chillies this year we’ve picked a couple of good ones off their list. The seeds came lighening fast and came with a nice newsletter type thing that had cooking tips for the variety of chillies ordered too, that’s a nice touch. We look forward to starting off the seed in the new year!

Big thanks again to Real Seeds and we here love what they’re doing. And they picked a tune too, it’s Kimchi by Formidable Vegetable.

Evening all

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Cheers to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us his pic of the Halo moon (“and is that Jupiter to the right?” said in the best Patrck Moore voice) taken at 10.30pm on Saturday night. We were well tucked up in bed at that time knackered after that little bit of work in the garden, the lightweights that we are. Cheers for that Rich, it’s a great photo!

And talking of Patrick Moore here’s possibly one of the best youtube clips ever, apologies as we do roll this out a few times a year as it love it so much. The handwriting part is excellent. “Keep watching the skies” as they say.

Dreams less sweet

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On Saturday afternoon after our Mystic Meg-like prophetic dream, the “vibes” (or more than likely the guilt) forced us out in the garden to do some tidying up. We only did a couple of hours but it was a pleasure to spend some time out the back.

We tidied up the patio and moved the carrots in the big pot we found in the street from the bottom of the garden up nearer the house. It’s all tops and does need thining out but there are baby carrots there and the decorative foilage ain’t bad. If anyone asks we’ll them they’re some sort of exotic microferns.

And we finally cleaned the leaves off the pond netting and gave it a good once over around it and it does make a difference to the look of it. With this weather God only knows when we’ll be able to get out there again though next Saturday is looking dry.

And finally we retrieved some beetroots, not many but enough to boil and to fill a small bowl and stick in the fridge to eat this week. Cheese and beetroot in a white bread sarnie, a treat you can’t beat!

And here’s a few random tunes for a Sunday evening.

 

 

Council gardeners dream in dub

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We had a dream last night that we were cutting the grass on a very large council estate. We were using a normal sized flymo with a very long extension lead which was plugged into one of the resident’s wall sockets with the lead trailing through their letterbox. A prophetic dream or just plain daft? Perhaps with the weather being nice today (but cold) we should get out there and tidy that back garden up before winter.

Honey from down under

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Big shout to our good friend Paul Greenstein once of the East Dulwich parish, now of Melbourne, Australia (we’ve featured his garden a few times here, here and here) and also a Madtone musical collaborator as Audiovert.

If you remember, Paul keeps bees in his garden (above: a pic of his bees from a while ago) and he’s just recently had his first bumper crop of honey (below), extracting around 30 kilos and reckon they may be more as well. Great stuff Paul and thanks for letting us know about it, we imagine it’s very hard work but well worth it though.

With some of the honey he’s been making Mead (below), one with Seville orange, cloves, raisins and cinnamon and the other with Morello cherries. Sounds and looks tasty! We tried making Mead once with honey procured from a stall at Leather Lane market. The recipe said it will either taste heavenly or like battery acid. Ours tasted like the latter, we never made it again!

Paul makes some great tunes under the name Audiovert including this Madtone collab African Bass and his contribution to the Shortwave Transmissions project here. Thanks for getting in touch Paul!

Coming to the end of the road

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It’s cold and miserable out there and the garden is in a right state even though it looked a lot better earlier this year. The butternut squash (above) that was making a late start has fallen by the wayside and now looks a right mess.

In the forthcoming weeks there may be a day where it may be dry enough to give the lawn a cut and even give the beds a tidy over. Remember the more work you do now means less work come the spring and the garden will look a lot easier on the eye over the winter. Trouble is when the garden looks a bit ropey you have less chance of putting on those gardening boots but we will try as the wild bit at the bottom (above) does look a bit wild and look at the pond (below). The word neglect comes to our guilty gardening minds.

Got any ideas of what you’ll be growing next year? We’re now on the lookout for any seed swaps, seed bargains or plants on the cheap. If you know of anything as in cheap seeds or events do let us know and we’ll blog them up.

November spawned a chillie

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It’s not that far off mid-November and the garden should be getting ready for a kip until spring but you wouldn’t think so. We picked three cherry tomatoes yesterday and the couple of chillies we got off the plant below that is sadly nearing its end.

If you fancy growing some hot chillies get some 7 Pot Yellow (AKA Seven Pot Brain Strain Yellow) and see what you think. They are originally from Trinidad and Tobago and are 1,000,000+ SHU (Scoville Heat Units) as in super hot! We’ve always picked them when they’ve been green so they’ve never got to the yellow stage. We’ve just looked and there’s a red variety which is even hotter at 1,000,000 – 1,200,000 SHU. We’ve never done chillies seriously before, thinking they’d never work but we were wrong and going to grow more!

We’ve also got a big pot of carrots growing after chucking some old seeds found at the bottom of the seed tin into a pot we originally found in the street filled with Lldl’s finest potting compost. They need some thinning out but we wonder if we’ll actually get some carrots later this year? The foilage looks quite decorative!

A view from the front door

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Big thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a photo of Skiddaw (3054 feet) The snow has come a couple of weeks later than usual but it is there now (remember the last post from Rich here). Rich was saying it is quite a labourious walk of 3 hours to get to the peak with not many twists and turns but from the top you can see as far as Scotland across the Solway, The Isle of Man to the South and Northern Ireland to the west. Now that is one view!

And it looks like from the doorstep they get good night skies too. The top night picture has a tinge of the northern lights. Cheers for those Rich.

This one goes out to the leak detection team…

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The micro-pond has disappeared so have the leak detection team alongside the Mole which is wrapped in a black bin bag at the back of their white van. We will miss you all and we don’t really want to be seeing you again (in the nicest way possible). Thank you LDT!