It’s sweltering and it’s not even 12 noon yet! We’ve got KFAI on and tuned into the Echo Chamber and listening to the last few tunes of the programme played by DJ Baby Swiss AKA CAPNCOZY (who co-hosts with the one and only Dr Strangedub) and this one by Kliment & Tuatara called Super Moon was just played. Perfect for weather like this!
Thanks to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for the sending us a photo update of his back garden. That’s what’s brilliant around this time of year, the garden seems to grow overnight and at a fair rate too. We all should really appreciate this time as autumn will be here before we know it. Above are the “Tiger Lilies gone wild” and below is entitled “When the Compost Takes on a Life of it’s Own” and we all know about that when we get those potato peelings and old onions sprouting! Is that a cucumber/courgette growing and are there a few mushrooms in there too?
And below a nice patch of borage that the bees love and the leaves are a good addition to comfrey if you’re making a liquid feed.
He also sent us a nice tune to accompany the pics from Anna Nacher & Marek Styczyński off the LP entitled Throbbing Plants (the title sounding very Genesis Breyer P-Orridge meets Percy Thrower.)
Thank you for the pics Justin. Please send your garden pics, no matter how small your garden is, even if it’s just a couple of pots on a windowsill, send them in! The address is onedeckpete (at) gmail.com we’d love to see your garden!
Here’s a recording off an online SDR of today’s One Deck Pete’s “Tunes to cheer you up” which was transmitted on Free Radio Skybird via Channel 292. This is the fifth episode in the series and this week it’s an exclusive of an early mix of a new tune from Jazz’min & Madtone with “Return to the branches”. Apologies for the non Hi-Fi quality but that’s what you get with that wireless thingy.
Judging by the weather forecast it looks like the good weather is returning next week. We’ve had some rain and sun this week which may have kept us in but it’s making the veg and the back lawn come out of themselves. Those scorch marks on the grass have now turned a shade of dark green and here’s something we spotted this morning, our first tomato, we know it’s early days but it’s the first one! We’ve already started feeding all the veg once a week with that smelly comfrey liquid so it is doing something! Roll on the good weather! #tomatoesinlockdown #lockdowngardeningnearlewisham
This Sunday 21st June sees the last in the present schedule of DJ Frederick’s Free Radio Skybird until the autumn. So tune in at 1100 UTC on 6070 kHz in the 49 Metre shortwave band via Channel 292 and if you haven’t got a suitable radio it can also be heard on the SDR link on their site here.
This month’s programme will feature DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore’s Radiophonic Laboratory, our very own One Deck Pete with Tunes to cheer you up, Jim Salmon with Radio Emma Toc World Service and a documentary on singer/songwriter Jim Sullivan (more on him here).
Tunes to cheer you up features a shortwave exclusive of an early mix of Jazz’min & Madtone’s brand new tune Return to the branches (at 33.33 mins in the Soundcloud link below). #shortwavesnotdead #freeradioskybird #jazzmin&madtone
https://soundcloud.com/djfrederick/free-radio-skybird-june-21-and-28-2020
There’s been a few trips out in the garden today when we haven’t been working. It started with a pre-work water and ended with a 9pm sowing session of cabbages and lettuce! The pond looks a lot better after our mini clear-out and we may even do another little one next weekend. And as for the self sown purple poppy in the nearest bed by the house…
And whilst listening to the latest This is a music show (068) we heard this killer of a tune. On first listen we thought it may have been The Stylistics, it weren’t, it’s Presidents with the fantastically named “5-10-15-20 (25-30 Years Of Love)” which was originally on the Sussex label. A wonderful record and there’s more about it here. Big shout to “Your Host” on This is a music show for playing the track! #musicialeducationthroughshortwaveradio
It hasn’t taken long for the pond to get overcrowded so that’s today’s job sorted. Tidy up the pond and taking care not to catch any of those tadpoles as there’s thousands of them! We’ll have all the debris spread out over the net so anything that want’s to get back in the water can.
We’ve even got a waterlily flowering which is great, we got that plant years ago from Lewisham’s premier pet shop for £20 and it’s been well worth it! After that job’s done it’ll be an lazy afternoon with Venture FM.
#pondsnotdead #gardeningsnotdead #gardeninginlockdown
Weatherwise it hasn’t been the best week this week but tonight looks like it may be taking a turn for the better as we had a little bit of warmth and even a hint of the sun an hour ago. It was nice to be out there.
The raised beds (below) have been doing great, there’s all sorts of stuff in them, spuds, carrots, beetroot, cabbages, tomatoes and even peppers. Talk about square metre gardening and sticking in as much as possible! They’ve come on a long way since that first week of lockdown when the local shop had the 3 spuds per person rule that made us think that we must obtain some seed spuds and any packs of seeds we could get our hands on.
Now we’re off the furlough we’re only spending the lunchhour and after work gardening and much of the big work was done when we were off. Once you get a good headstart on yourself, gardening gets a lot easier but it’s getting that start. We managed to keep the bed on the right hand side (below) a lot tidier than usual and even stuck in some tomatoes, cabbages and spuds amongst the flowers. The comfrey we use daily, pulling off massive handfuls to stick in the compost heap and for putting in holes before we transplant something. That keeps the comfrey under control as it can swamp everything if it gets its way!
Something we forgot to do on most of the tomatoes was to pinch out the sideshoots of the variety we have, so the plant can put all it’s goodness into the trusses on the main stem. We’ve been through all of the plants now and there was only one that had two stems but that doesn’t matter, we’ll keep it as “an tomato experiment”. More on sideshooting tomatoes here.
And talk about best laid plans and all that, this bed below was supposedly going to be rested this year and was going to be full of the Thompson and Morgan wildflower seed mix. Well we sowed them at the back with the borage and we’ll see what happens. Can we now have the sun back please? It is June.
And here’s a wonderful piece of music to welcome the sun back when it does finally return from the great Blundetto called Paseo. Tune!
And here’s a wonderfult tip/warning from the “well interesting” or “well out there, man” (whatever your point of view about this kind of thing is) “Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” by Scott Cunningham (Llewellyn Worldwide) about the herb that is Sage. Personally, we love this book as it makes us smile during another weekend of lockdown. #gardeninginlockdown #losingourmarblesandpersonalityinlockdown
The weather has taken a turn for the windy this morning. Those cardoons we bought out of curiosity from Shannon’s as seedlings are on their second year now and well over six foot at the moment are swaying all over the shop. The flower heads are now starting to form, they really are something else when they come out. As for that Giant Russian Mammoth Sunzilla Big Massive and Broad 12ft Super Size Sunflower we bought on ebay…
Weeds up to me knees 