A big thanks to our friend Ruth who lets us know of a great course called Connect with Nature – The Basics of Permaculture on Friday 17th March 2023 from 11.00am to 1.30pm. You’ll learn about the building blocks of Permaculture design and how to apply it in everyday life, something we here would be very much into and it’s at a great price of £20 as well. It takes place at John Evelyn Community Garden, Windlass Place, London SE8 3QZ. More on the course and how to apply here.
Here’s last nights transmission of the Imaginary Stations show on WRMI which is a KBIN special with WSTL vs WELK. As usual the show is an eclectic mix of tunes from DJ Frederick and the crew and features a One Deck Pete mix called “A bit of welk whistling” at 06.04 minutes in. Here’s the tracklisting:
Charles Kellogg – How Birds Sing (WSTL)
Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin – Loango weaver (WSTL)
Meekmocha – 2 Hop Whistler Dub (WSTL)
Ghostown – Accordeon (Instrumental version) (WELK)
Jackie Mittoo & Peter Tosh – Whistling Jane (WSTL)
NO FINGER NAILS – Good & Intelligent ft. Mannaroman (WELK)
A big shout to Justin Patrick Moore who played this Lou Reed tune last night called City Lights which has had some rather scathing reviews over the years but we find the song rather catchy with a nice upbeat bassline.
We watched the weather forecast on telly last night and the tall chap in the suit was a little unsure about what’s going to happen next week, “It will get colder and there may be snow or maybe not, even we don’t know”. We deduced from this it’ll be a good idea not to be too keen this weekend especially sowing something outside, so we’re holding our horses as they say.
Because of the cold weather today we decided to give it a miss even though we had some jobs to do out in the garden. We did have post this morning that cheered us up though, a small bag of Rocket early seed potatoes (If you want to know the different types of potatoes from earlies to lates explained simply, have a look here), some shallot sets that we’ll put in mid-March after this cold spell hopefully and some packs of seeds: spring onions (the variety Guardsman that have dark blue/green leaves), purple sprouting broccoli and some miner’s lettuce which we’ve never come across before. More on the miners lettuce here.
Also a good mate of ours sent us a packet of Quaking/Quivering Grass seeds (top right hand corner of the above pic). They weren’t sure if that was the actually name of the plant or just the name the person who gave them the seeds called them. We checked on google, it did exist but it was only one of its names, it’s also called: didder, doddering dillies, jiggle-joggles and quakers-and-shakers. More on Quaking Grass or Briza media here. Do keep warm this weekend!
A couple of events to stick in the old diary. The first is a Seed Swap in the Corbett Community Library, Torridon Road, Catford, London SE6 1RQ on Saturday 25th March 2023 from 10am to 3pm. More on the event here. Thanks to @LewishamGardens for alerting us to this!
And on WRMI this Sunday 5th March 2023 Imaginary Stations presents a KBIN mix up special with WSTL versus WELK. Expect some whistling, yodelling and squeezebox classics at 2300 UTC on 9395 kHz. Get that accordion at the ready!
There hasn’t been much gardening done this week what with that cold spell we’re having that is testing the elephant garlic, the foxglove plugs and all of the garden. If you want something decent to listen to while you’re stuck indoors you can’t go wrong with last night’s transmission of JNHK from The Imaginary Stations collective below.
It’s a great show with a mix of all sorts of Japanese related tunes from Justin Patrick Moore and DJ Frederick and at 09.33 a mix from One Deck Pete called “Big in Japan” and here’s the tracks:
GORE – Bills are piling up
Forgotten employee 忘れられた従業員 – The Backroom Tapes – A Merry Kmart Christmas
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Riot in Lagos
Japan Sound Portrait – Tatemae Ceremony
Dry & Heavy – Dub the Bong Around
Japan to Kangaroo Island, Australia CB DX
Rewind and enjoy!
Sunday was lovely for a spot of gardening after a rather wet and windy Saturday. The lawn was cut, the beds got a bit of a tidy up and we even got caried away sowing some borage under the tree. It’ll probably won’t be the best spot for them and God knows if they’ll even germinate as it may have been sunny Sunday but who knows what the future weather has got in store for us.
And we even had a peek under the plastic covered raised bed and the elephant garlic is coming on a bit and the foxgloves that were once plugs have even survived after a bit of a change from the warmth of the kitchen windowsill to outside in the freezing cold.
Come Monday morning it was back to the cold weather again and we went down to the compost heap to stick a couple of tea bags in and to give it a turn. What was well suprising was how much heat was generated in the heap even overnight with the grass clippings, there was even a bit of steam coming off the heap after forking it over. Covering the heap with cardboard certainly keeps the heat in. Let’s hope we can get out there again this Sunday.
And here’s a wonderful tune for a Wednesday night from Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin called Loango Weaver. It’s from last years set “A Guide to the Birdsong of Western Africa by Various Artists” well worth checking out here.
An excellent dub from the great Manasseh called Just One Dub found on a shortwave mix researching trip via Bandcamp this evening. It’s from a good few years ago (2013) but does that really matter? An excellent heavy dub and the vocal version is excellent as well (Cate Ferris – Blaze Bright).
To be played very loudly.
The above programme was supposed to be aired last Sunday but WRMI was down all evening last week on 9395kHz. Fingers crossed the Imaginary Stations 45th Parallel Midwinter Broadcast will now be on in a few hours time (Sunday 19th February 2023) on 9395 kHz at 2300 hrs UTC. At 20 minutes in One Deck Pete presents “A 45 mix” with tracks from Borealism, Boca 45, mndbd, Jah Wobble and Mad Professor. Tune in and get on that circle of lattitude and enjoy! If you haven’t a shortwave radio do tune in on this online SDR here on 9395kHz on AM mode.
We took Friday off work hoping to do few jobs in the garden but we didn’t actually get around to it as it was a bit cold and tried again this afternoon but the weather was rubbish again with some light rain. The forecast looks great for tomorrow though so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
And here’s a nice bit of chilled business, a track from GORE in Tokyo, Japan with Bills are piling up. Get some rest tonight as we all may busy in the garden tomorrow.
And talking of spring which we weren’t directly, here’s a favourite of ours from a long time ago. Very apt!
A while ago we heard a wonderful Radio 4 programme in the Lights Out series called Call Signs. It featured the story of a radio ham, Wlad Gurtovy (US7IGN) talking about life in Kyiv, Ukraine on his own after his wife and children had to flee to Poland because of the crazy war.
It’s a capitating story, one about radios, home-made antennas and even features his children’s hamster called Mouse. He jokes that when his family contacts him, sometimes they ask how Mouse is before they ask how he is! It’s all mixed in with various radio noises and a nice soundtrack from 8ctavius. Download and listen to the programme here.
Wlad has also published a book about his experiences called “War Diaries – A Radio Amateur in Kyiv” which is presented as a record of events from the first day of the war on 24 February to the end of September 2022. We’ve still not finished the book yet but it’s an excellent read so far and one well worth buying. More on purchasing it here.
A big thanks to Wlad for passing on the pictures of his good friend Sergiy (UT3UFD)’s banana plant presently growing indoors in his apartment in Kyiv and it looks as healthy as anything. We’re not the best with indoor plants here sadly but it certainly looks like it is getting a lot of care an attention from Sergiy as it is thriving.
Wlad mentioned that Sergiy uses a lamp to heat the plant as it needs an environment of about 20°C. When the temperature in the apartment recently dropped to 14°C because of the blackouts he had to turn the gas stove on to get the heat back up to the right temperature. That’s dedication for you.
Weeds up to me knees 