A message from Crete

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A big shout to Rich R who is on his holidays at the moment in Crete and found this rather nice flower called a sea daffodil (AKA white sand lily, amaryllis, lily of Knossos, beach saffron or beach crocus). It’s supposed to have a “pleasing, exotic and very subtle lily scent”. More about the plant here.

He also took some great pics of the sunset and the eclipse the other night (above and below). It looks like a magical place and “the beach we look out on is the actual one where Zorba the Greek (Anthony Quinn) did his dance”. Wow great stuff Rich, enjoy the rest of your holiday!

One for after the bins go out

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Heard on this week’s Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room (here), here’s a wonderful bit of classical ambience. It’s by Steven Legget & Laura Reid and it’s called Low and it’s excellent stuff and one to wind down to after the bins have been put out and you’re sitting pondering “Was it recycling and general refuse or was it just recycling tonight?”

Here’s a good refuse tip, don’t feel left out after a bank holiday. Bin collection is usually a day later so put your feet up and wait another 24 hours before dragging those bins down the drive/path knowing that you “know the (wheely bin) score”. Remember every part of the world over has a bin night. What night is yours? Do send us your pictures of your dustbins!

More from a north London garden

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Cheers to Debby H for sending us some pictures of her garden in north London now that the summer is sadly coming to an end (how quick has this year been?) The first (above) is of the Zephyranthes Robusta (AKA Rain Lily). As she told us “These bulbs have flowered so many times this summer. We thought that we had seen the last for the year, but amazingly it has performed again!”, great to hear!

There’s also the Ornithogalum “The flowers have now grown. Unfortunately, one of them broke off, possibly due to the wind, but we still have 8 flowers.” Even though the picture is a little out of focus it gives us a good idea how they have done this year.

“Our sedum has flowered and is looking very pretty” above.

Debby also has a self-seeded ragwort (we think) which if it is, has a nice flower but has its problems as it is poisonous to horses and other livestock and causes minor skin irritations so it’s better to leave those gardening gloves on if you ever are wanting to pull one up.

Cheers for the update Debby, the garden is looking great!

WP1 on the Waiting Room

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A big thanks to The Rhythm Doctor for playing Madtone‘s WP1 on the radio earlier this week. If you want to hear a great show which plays all the way through from ambient, dub, jazz to funk you should tune into The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on a Monday morning from 9-11am (UK Time) on IDA Radio, Tallinn here. Cheers for Gerry Hectic for letting us know about the tune being played as we were on a 100 bus to Rye at that time.

 

The Rhythm Doctor also played a great one from Rockers Hi-Fi called Ghia a few tunes after. Chilled, dubby and then into some nice beats.

September’s weather has come in August

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We’ve got some time off work for a week now and typically there’s a good bit of rain on the way. It’s good for the garden (as it’s parched), the pond (water levels are low) but not for us (lounging around in the sun doing nothing is fun, can’t lounge around in the rain!)

The garden is going to go wild with all this rain and of course mixed with a bit of sun that may come out from behind the clouds this week. Above is a reminder of what plants in the sunshine look like just in case you have forgotten. This is the salvia we got from B&Q a few weeks ago and it’s loving where it is.

 

 

The birds and the bees and a cup of green tea

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Early yesterday morning we decided to clear the “wild” part of the garden (below) as yes it is wild but it just looked a bit of a mess. We cleared out all the weeds and now it’s a little bit bare but we can imagine that won’t last long. We’re expecting some rain later this week so that mixed with some sunny periods will be the right conditions for a mad growth spurt.

Whilst having a cup of tea admiring our good work, we were visited by a fox quickly passing through, two birds including the Robin (top pic) and then a neighbour’s cat came in either for the birds or the bit of catmint we are growing near the pond. We remember years at Shannon’s someone telling us it will bring all the locals cats in. Perhaps they were right?

Get much wildlife in your garden? Do let us know.

An Eric and Ernie bank holiday monday dub connection

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We’ve just found this tonight, a dub piece by the great Scientist & Alicia Previn called Scientist Spacewalk. Super strings dub on the answer rhythm. More on the collab here.

 

And it’s nothing to do with the strings on 1970’s UK reggae releases…

 

 

Sitting here watching crows like themselves

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Early this morning we popped down B&Q in Bell Green for some liquid fertiliser as we’re not producing enough comfrey leaves to make the liquid feed we’re used to putting on our garden (Above: crow waiting for bus home like us at 8.30 am).

Something we should look into is the NPK content that comes on the side of the bottle denoting how much Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and K for Potassium (or Potash) is in the liquid. As we’ve always used home-made comfrey liquid and mixed in compost on the beds, that’s something we’ve got to research about more.

Back home we spent a good hour or so feeding the back garden including the giant sunflower which is reaching skywards. We’ve 3 sunflowers, this 8ft monster and another 2 that are about 5 foot. It must be all about where they’re placed and how much sun they get. We love the sunflowers as the tops do follow the sun about during the day.

And this week we were told about this video, 10 vegetables/fruit that we don’t bother with anymore. We’re talking skirret, alexanders, good King Henry, medlar, chickweed, scorzonera, welsh onions, lovage, tansy (“The punk rock herb…” “…that demands respect and attention” as the bloke describes it, we love that!) and turnip greens. We wonder as food fashions come and go, will any of these “old time something come back again” as the song goes?

 

And two tunes about flying winged things:
The first a nice dub number from Derajah meets The 18th Parallel called Dub Crow.

 

The next is an a excellent tune released by the wonderful Sublime Frequencies out of Seattle, Washington, it’s by Chhoun Vanna and called To Tea Yum Chlong (Birds Are Singing But My Lover Won’t Return). At 2.45, it just ain’t long enough.

“The birds are chirping, to and fro
My love, have you forgotten me?
As water can’t cut through the sand
I can’t cut you from my memories
The bridge (between you and I) has broken
The pathway is gone, and the water is so very deep
How am I to find you on the other side, so far away?”
Thanks to fleurmach.com for the lyrics.

 

Volunteers or were they meant to be?

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Earlier this year we were given a mixture of seed packets that came free with gardening magazines. We’ve had all sorts and usually just threw then in corners of vegetable beds or wherever there was a spare space.

Just by the raised beds at the side, there’s a mixture of a couple of cherry tomato plants and this (above). We put the photograph into Plant.id and found out it is a Common Mallow. We then looked at the Wildlife Trust website and they had this to say about it (here) “Certain parts of common mallow are edible (leaves, flowers and seeds) and there is evidence that the Romans may have deliberately cultivated the plant to be used for food and medicine.” It’s not a bad looking flower either and we are not going to pull it up for now.

We may have covered this before but the above (according to plant.Id) is buckwheat. This appeared from out of nowhere on a container by a fence/screen and it’ll be staying for this season we think. Wikipedia has told us it’s a pseudocereal and it is related to sorrel, knotweed and rhubarb. The things you find in your garden!

And here’s a great tune from Optimus Featuring Oskar Gudjonsson with Four Point One.

South London garden report – August 2025

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Earlier this year we had a report from Rich R who had just returned from Sicily and sent us some photographs including one of a nice flower (above) that we had not heard of called lantana (more here).

The week after seeing the pictures we bought a couple of lantana plants off ebay, not sure what happened to the other one but here’s one of them. As far as we read it’s a perennial so perhaps next year it will look better. We’ve just read online that in some places they can be invasive and considered a noxious weed, blimmin’ heck on that note we’ll keep them in a pot.

 

The salvia we bought from B&Q  (above) is looking good, it’s getting the odd bit of comfrey liquid every now and again and a water if we see that the soil is bone dry around it. More on salvia care here.

 

And finally a shot of the cosmos under the dead tree. Do send us your gardening pictures and a song recommendation (if we like it we’ll post it up with the article but no Cliff Richard/Coldplay please as a refusal often offends). Have a good Sunday and enjoy this sunshine!