Pop goes the teasel

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It may not look like much but the above is a teasel bought off the internet. You see them growing in the wild and they have such a great flower/seed head. Give it another year and we should have something interesting to see. What we can’t believe is that it don’t feature in “Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” by Scott Cunningham (Llewellyn Worldwide). That can’t be right, but we have found out that the bloke who invented Velcro used the said plant as influence. The things you learn eh.

And talking of teasels here’s a tune by Mikah Sykes out of Portland, Oregon with Cutleaf Teasel (or Common Teasel) don’t know what genre this is, but it sure is interesting.

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.

 

To the top of Forest Hill

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Watering the garden early this morning just after we got up we noticed some great sights before it started to get hot. The echinops are now starting to flower and what flowers they are too.

We also now think these are the cosmos not the love in the mist that are beside them, the leaves are similar but not exactly the same. Shouldn’t be too long now before they flower (Cheers Debby H!)

And we are sure now that these are the Thompson & Morgan‘s Quick Fire chillies. It’s only a small plant but they sure are producing a lot of fruit! We also think beside this (not pictured) is their Quick Snack cucumbers. Ain’t gardening great?

Cheers to Gerry Hectic for sharing this very nice mix from Alina Bzhezhinska and Tulshi called Whispers of Rain (Continuous Mix) and boy wouldn’t it be nice to have some whispers of rain this week?

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.

Seen in the garden this morning

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Morning! While we were giving the garden a comfrey feed this morning we noticed that the Thompson & Morgan‘s Black Moon tomatoes are doing well (above). There’s a little bit of green in the underneath of the fruit but they are mainly black on the top and look great.

And on the poppy tip (from the anarchically sown “thrown them anywhere” method) here’s a couple of nice ones that have sprung up this morning. Poppies are well worth it!

Also we may have news about our cosmos but they are so planted so close to some love in a mist we’re a bit confused, more on those soon.

Slow down a little via shortwave radio

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A big thanks again to DJ Frederick and all the Imaginary Stations Crew for broadcasting the Downbeat on Shortwave 2 show over the weekend via those radio transmitters at Shortwaveradio.de

The show featured a hands across the world collaboration between Jesse Yuen from Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from Catford Village, UK who played two 15 minute mixes each in a back to back style featuring some downtempo business to slow things down in our life.

We’ve posted up two recordings of the show. The first is the stereo studio recording and below that, the off-air recording via the shortwaves recorded in glorious mono. There’s added texture to the show thanks to signals bouncing off the ionosphere/groundwave propagation and someone next door switching on their toaster.

Got a spare few grand?

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Big shout to Gerry Hectic for sending us the link to an auction this month called “The John Peel Collection” featuring all sorts of stuff from Peel Acres. There’s John’s copy of Joy Division’s Ideal for Living 12″ with a letter from Rob Gretton. Got £3,000 handy? Have a butcher’s at what else is up for grabs if you’ve got some spare cash here.

And we’re pleased as punch to see the fanzine Ded Yampy in a couple of lots (below). Nothing as pricey as the Joy Division rarity but still a couple of hundred quid we ain’t got. Did we really send him 3 copies of Issue 1?

Years ago we faxed John Peel a couple of pages over with details of one of our Steroid Abuse nights to see if he would read it out on his show. We were suprised when he started reading said fax out saying, “News just in that Steroid Abuse have a party in London this Saturday. I can’t tell you where it is, who is on or how much is it to get in as the last page of the fax has failed to come through.” How daft is that? Bloody faxes eh?
R.I.P. the great John Peel.