Category Archives: Wildlife

Answering the call of the cosmos

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It has finally come, the day the first cosmos flower appeared. We may have lost a few plants to the slugs earlier on this year but the few we started off in pots and are now undernearth the dead cherry tree have got buds on them and this afternoon one actually opened. Cheers to Debby H for starting us off on this cosmos journey. Anyone else got any cosmos pictures to post up here? One deck pete at gee mail dot com if so.

And today also saw one of the cardoons showing their first purple dyed spikey top with more growth to come in time we hope. The bee on it seems happy enough.

And for a Saturday evening here’s  a couple of excellent tunes, the first being from Cantoma (AKA Phil Mison The balearic fare dodger) called Light Before – Ambient Outro. It’s one piece of ambient chillout to end the day with!

 

And a lovely bit of dub from a set called Mid City Dub Encounters Vol.1 by Irie One and Lord Sekou on Jah Thunder Records and this track is called Kalimba Dub.

It’s not just the fake Bailey’s you should be buying at Lldl

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Cheers to Gerry Hectic who emailed us letting us know that “Lidl have a set of 6 really nice looking alpines for £4.99” (Below are the said offers which look great.) The top picture are the bargains in situ and we love the small stones on top of the pots that really work.

We haven’t got that many alpines/succulents but we picked up this sempervivum (in the forefron of the picture below) at a sale at a community garden two years ago (the one where we bought the mullien here) and have split it a few times since.

Behind that are a couple of mini succulents bought off ebay which are sandwiched between the pink geranium that we bought at another sale which has been divided a few times now and passed onto to our mates. It’s all about passing things on!

 

Shivering Sands calling live on channel

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Here’s an excellent radio programme featuring those Maunsell delights Shivering Sands. It’s a 24 minute great listen so tune in here for a very interesting listen. Thanks to the The Maunsell Seaforts Appreciation Goup on Facebook for posting this up!

And when we put Maunsell dub into Bandcamp it came up with this, a great version of United Melody by Addis Pablo no less.

 

A butcher’s around the garden

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After a bit of rain last night in SE23 we viewed a few things this morning, the first being a small water lily on the pond. It’s been taken close up and looking again we’re still not sure what that is in the top right hand corner, micro frog spawn perhaps?

We’re seeing flower buds on the cosmos. We did sow a few seeds in various places but these are the ones that survived. There’re under an old dead cherry tree and they seem have taken well. In a few days there should be flowers (Cheers Debby H again).

And this look like a couple of the Thompson & Morgan seeds here. The above must be the Quick Fire Chilli Pepper to the rear and in front the Quick Snack Cucumber.

We’ve bought some plant feed now to supplement our ever dwindling amount of Comfrey liquid and with the supposedly 25 degrees C today, all should be the right stuff for these plants to grow well. Or so we hope!

There’s Mullein in my garden, what am I gonna do?

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We looked up Mullein in our “well interesting” or “well out there, man” (whatever your point of view about this book is) “Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” by Scott Cunningham (Llewellyn Worldwide). It’s a bonkers book and one that never fails to make us smile.

 

A report from north London

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A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of her garden that’s come on a bit since she went away for few weeks. The above is of the first cosmos flowers.

Above is the radio related Marconi red pepper which is doing very well and her second pepper plant (below) is looking good too.

And her giant daisies (below) are coming along nicely!

There’s been a couple of suprises, one being a fuchsia that she thought was dead has come back to life and her ophiopogon (below), which is now flowering (little pink bell-like ones.)
It’s good coming back from being away and seeing how much has changed in the garden. Cheers for those Debby!

A view of the cosmos and the lakes

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Cheers to our friend in the Lake District Rich R for sending us a picture of his first cosmos flower, brilliant stuff. It’s fantastic about all this passing on seeds that gardeners do and a big cheers to Debby H for starting all this cosmos mania off in the first place. Ours are still a work in progress, but we may know more in a few days time.

Rich also sent us a pic of Bassenthwaite Lake from the other evening, looks great. Cheers for those!

A bike’s a bike, how do you describe a bike?

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We love those 1970’s information films here and have spliced the “Lock Your Bike” classic film from 1974 over the top of a little bit of BiggaBush‘s excellent Beat Dem in Dub. A big cheers to BiggaBush for giving it the thumbs up and Gerry Hectic for linking the tune with the original video. What’s a frame number?

 

Big shout to Dr Strangedub who debuted the tune on the brilliant Echo Chamber here on KFAI at 96.40 mins in. If you love reggae and dub you must tune into this weekly show. Listen closely and you may even hear a couple more public information dub instrumentals. Big up the Echo Chamber!

Here’s another couple of classic films from time gone by.

As Half Man Half Biscuit once sang “It was loft ladders what killed our Martin”. If only Martin had watched a public information film before his trek into the loft as he would be around to tell his tale now.