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!

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!