It looks like spring has sprung

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Pic: The pond this morning.

A big thanks to our good mate Gerry Hectic for sending us a mix to celebrate this first day of spring called “A sunshine mix in spring”. It’s a brilliant garden/nature related mix and one to have on when you’re sowing those first vegetable/flower seeds indoors on the potting table (in our case the kitchen sink!)

Here’s the tracklisting:
Intro – Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Alabaster DePlume – That Was My Garden (Edit)
Tunng – Snails
Oscar Jerome – Smell The Daisies feat. anaiis (Radio Edit)
THSA – In Bloom
Late Nite City – Higher Ground
United Freedom Collective – Moonshine
lovetempo – But I Do (Daisybelle Remix)
Gabril Gosse – Breeze ft. Emile Parisein
Shane Sato – Gardenia
Yahushi Ide – A Place In The Sun
Ebi Soda – Bamboo
Evren Furtuna – Little Flower
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Chaos In The CBD – Midnight In Peckham ft. Isaaz Aesilli
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)

So raise a toast to Jean-Michel Jarre if you’re that way inclined or just to the forthcoming season when one day soon you will wake up and not see a frost. Cheers Gerry!

This is a warning!

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Pic: The grass outside this morning.

The sun’s been out, it feels lovely and warm and you feel a real need to sow those seeds outside or get those seedlings into those freshly prepared beds. Think again, do your research, watch those John Craven’s Countryfile weather forecasts and have a look at the frost calculator here.

You only want to be going to the garden centre/nursery for those bedding plants once. Watch out for frost!

Pic: John “good bloke” Craven

A tale about a railway cutting

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(Picture from Dan S off Foursquare from 2024)

It was great weather today and this morning on the way back from the dentist we helped prune the wonderful collection of geraniums at Honor Oak Park train station.

Well, we were given a pair of secateurs from behind the ticket desk and cut five bits off the massive geraniums so we could use them as cuttings. We stuck 3 in a large pot indoors and put a couple in the cloche outside after dipping the end in some cutting powder. We’ve never taken cuttings on the outdoor variety before but they’re supposed to root easy. Perhaps in the summer it may be a better time to do it but let’s see what happens. More on taking Geranium cuttings from Gardeners World here.

Did you know there was a punk band from Saitama, Japan called Geranium? This is 17 minutes of them on full pelt mode but the first tune is one of their catchier ones (from the good old days of 2007).

And below here’s more of an ambient Geranium themed tune by The Ambient Zone called Red Geranium. A track featuring Chris Coco and Nick Cornu on chilled out guitar. From the good old ambient days of 2021.

Stations that only exist in our imagination

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Here’s a couple of shortwave shows in an Imaginary Stations related style, the first on Wednesday 19th March 2025 at the new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI is another episode of the excellent Shortwave Music Library by DJ Frederick. A show well worth tuning into if you the like all sorts musicwise.

This weekend coming, Imaginary Stations hoist the sails on the pirate ship Skybird again and brings you another audio voyage in the Free Radio Skybird series and it’s the third and final planned broadcast of the station this year.

Tune in on Saturday 22nd March 2025 at 1200 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and also on Sunday 23rd March 2025 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz. As with last week’s show, expect some great tunes, onshore and offshore classics and lots of interesting bits and pieces as usual. At 28 minutes in there will be a mix called Who’d be a pirate (again) by One Deck Pete. Tune in!

 

Stick your plastic plant labels

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We’ve always had this thing about those plastic plant labels. You buy a pack and you have the best intentions of keeping them for ages (using Barkeeper’s Friend to clean off “Lettuce” or whatever their last usage was) then you lose them or they snap and you vow never to use them again.

Yesterday we thought “Never mind that!” and just got a “sharpie” and snapped a few bamboo canes into quarters. Saved us a load of hassle. We then stuck some polythene sheeting on top of some pallet box collars and there you go, a makeshift cloche full of clearly named rows of broccoli, cabbage, leek and beetroot!

Snails causing trouble again/Dub causing trouble again

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Here’s a lovely remix by Willam Doyle of Snails by Tunng and what a great tune it is for this cold Friday evening. It’s dreamy with some eastern flavours

And  now a mad spoken word dub track out of France by Khoe Wa called Spoken.

 

Have a good weekend and hope that sun comes back soon!

Are you sure it was sunny here this weekend?

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Where has that sun gone to, the one that appeared here the weekend and the same one that contributed to Sunday being 17°C? You will laugh, as over the weekend we even put some plants out in the back garden to harden off. It’s only March and we’re thinking about hardening off plants, we must be crazy. The above pic is a of self-seeded tomato in front of some suncream, after sun and insect repellent, a taste of things to come you reckon?

Do remember that frost prediction site here as that will come in handy if you’ve got that “we’ll get those seeds/plants in early” feeling like us. It’s nearly there but do wait a little before sticking those plants out. Have you seen the forecast for this week?

In a world where things are free

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We’ve just returned from a couple of days in Brighton where when we arrived, there was a mad sea mist which engulfed all of the seafront. It lifted late afternoon to reveal a wave-free sea that looked like glass as there was zero wind which made for a very out of this world sunset (above).

On the evening we witnessed an appearance of the one and only Tunng. This was after having a couple of pints in a pub which was from a long lost world where The Incredible String band and psychedelia were playing from a free juke box. The barman sat on a stool behind the bar rolling a couple of roll-ups (and one for ron of course), brought your pint over to your table with the card machine and popped out for a fag every now and again leaving the bar area unattended. A different (pub) world all together.

As for Tunng they were excellent, playing tunes from their new LP “Love you all over again” (an LP well worth investigating here) peppered with some old favourites. Acoustic guitars, a banjo, a melodica, woodwind instruments and some very strange sounds thrown over the top. Wonderful stuff!

The day after we found a market we never knew that existed which had a free shop. That’s right, a shop where all things were free. As the owner told us “I was so fed up that the charity shops were charging so much we decided to give things away” and as the sign says on the wall “Please don’t be greedy”.

There’s a simple rule: “No drugs. No guns. No animals. No BIG things. Everything else is welcome!” We picked up a handful of small pots which will come in handy at Weeds HQ and an old-school ladle. A super place to visit and more on the shop here.

Hope everyone out there is enjoying this great weather we’re having at the moment!

 

Surprise Spuds!

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Cheers to Debby H for sending us a message: “We found a small cardboard box in one of our cupboards recently. It had strange shoots coming out of the ends. Upon opening it we saw two small potatoes that had sprouted. We had forgotten that we stored them away last autumn to be used as seed potatoes. We planted them in a flower pot and now they are growing quite well.” Brilliant stuff and hope they give a good harvest.

Talking of potatoes, one of the things with growing spuds in the soil outside is leaving a few small ones in there even if you think you have pulled every one up. Then come the year after, you get  “volunteers” sprouting up. We wonder could these volunteers be moved and would they give you a good harvest. Your thoughts please.

And back to Debby H’s garden here’s the daffodils and primroses that are doing well. Cheers Debby!

Garden updates are always welcomed here. Send any pics to one deck pete (at symbol) geemail dot com.