Monday night serious listening

Thanks to our good friend Marc B for letting us know today about this great show featuring the late great Penny Reel which starts with a couple of old doo-wop tunes with their reggae counterparts and then into some very choice tunes, a show well worth listening to!

There’s another show up on Weeds, posted not long after his passing which featured Penny with Paul Bradshaw here. Below is one of the tunes he played on it, The Lord’s Army by Hy Mann that we’d previously never heard of. The tune sounded like it may have been recorded at the same session as a personal favourite of ours Follow You by M (Martell?) Robinson. This music lark never fails to disappoint, opening a can of worms also comes to mind.

STOP PRESS And talking of opening cans of worms, as if by magic we have been directed to a Jamaican born singer called Martel Robinson who used to sing in working mens clubs in Coventry and Birmingham and release records under M Robinson. Same chap? We do hope so!

STOP PRESS JULY 2023: Also known as Ray Martell!

https://www.discogs.com/artist/2205400-Martel-Robinson

Garlic update, garlic update

We took the protection off the raised bed this afternoon so we could pop the foxgloves in pots in there. No idea if the cold nights will knock them for six but we’ll take a chance. When we took the frame off we were chuffed with what we saw of the giant garlic. They’re starting to make a break for it.

Seed Swap in SE15

This Sunday coming February 12th 2023 is the annual Seed Swap at Glengall Wharf Garden, Peckham SE15 6NF. Last year we picked up a great assortment of seeds including some Texsel Greens (Ethiopian Mustard), some nice tomato varieties and lots of poppy seeds and hopefully will do the same ths year. The eventbrite link is here.

Bring your duplicate packs of free seeds from the gardening magazines or bring your surplus seeds down to SE15 6NF from 11am – 2pm.

Is it spring yet?

The sun is out today and cue a million of us gardeners getting all excited. It may be a false start to the season but who knows, we can see buds forming on some of the shrubs, the mint we transferred a few weeks ago into a pot (above) is looking healthy and it isn’t a bad thing to get out in the garden now and do a bit of tidying which will save you a bit of time when spring does finally spring.

DJ Spycatcher

Last night the latest edition of Imaginary Stations KSPY took to the ionosphere thanks to WRMI. Thanks to all agents who tuned in to the spy-laden broadcast via the shortwaves but if you didn’t, the studio audio is now up on mixcloud (below).

At 7 minutes in is a mix from One Deck Pete.
Here’s the tracks:
Zeb – The Spy from Cairo – Qanun in Dub
Top Secret…shhh – Winding the time
Edwin Starr – Agent Double O Soul
Secret Nuclear – Coded messages
Ax Martz – Mensaje en codigo (Coded Message)
Nat King Cole – The Blue Danube (Excerpt)

Enjoy the hour of all things KSPY but please don’t forgot to look over your shoulder as you never know who’s watching.

On a seed swapping tip

We’ve just heard of a great seed swap from Incredible Edible in Lambeth next month at The Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road SE1 7LB on Saturday 18th February 2023 from 12-3pm. Get those spare seeds in a packet and get on down there and see what’s available to swap.

Know of any good Seed Swaps in the London area? If so do get in contact and we will post up the details as we love a seed swap here.

If you’re missing the sunshine…

Summer seems a million miles away but thanks to our good friend Paul Greenstein once of SE22, here’s a taste of the sun. Paul’s been based in Melbourne, Australia for some years now (we’ve featured his garden a few of times here and here) and here’s some recent pics.

Here’s a fine example of the Bramley Apple he put in his garden as he said “You can’t get decent cooking apples over here!” and here’s the fruits in all their glory (above).

The Artichoke (above) is looking fine under the Sunflower and it looks like it’s appreciating the shade. And (below) look at the Sunflower!

And he keeps Bees too and he tells us he may be getting a nice harvest of honey this year. Brilliant Paul, the garden is making us think of summer even more and it’s looking great!

And below is some of Paul’s musical output. This was his contribution to the Cities and Memory Shortwave Transmissions project last year called Another Universe. Like he says on the C&M site “Like the narrators, I have a fondness for all things space, astrophysics and the big questions like: is the Universe going to end, what are black holes, and why does Surf Guitar sound dangerous?”

Love the garden Paul and send us more pictures of the Bees please!

The compost heap at minus one

We popped down the compost heap with some tea bags and kitchen peelings this morning. Even in this freezing weather, it’s a chance to stretch the legs and see what’s happening in the garden.

There ain’t much going on at the moment so we decided to give the heap a turn with a garden fork, not sure if it’s the right thing to do at this time of year but fork it we did. The brandling worms are still at work and the decaying waste is looking good. Work never stops for the worms (unless perhaps a giant fork appears from above).

We felt sorry for the worms (who will just return to the heat of the lower part of the pile we hope) so we covered the heap with some sheets of cardboard and to hold them in place we stuck a plastic tray and a jug on top. There was no specific reason for the jug apart from it was the only thing we could get our hands on at the time. Perhaps we could start a new trend in the gardening mags of “household items on top of compost heaps”. You saw it here first!

While we were writing this piece we’ve had on the excellent new bandcamp set from Jah Wobble – The bus routes of south London. To say it’s good is an unstatement. It’s great that the 35 and 12 routes have been represented on here as they are ones we’ve been on often and in the direction stated. Two buses which weren’t featured on here are the P4 and P12, they are not bad buses when they do arrive but they certainly have their moments and we just don’t know how inspirational they’d be musicwise. 35 Towards Clapham Junction is our favourite tune at the moment and we’d love to know what the instrument/sample is at 3.30 on the track as it’s one mad sound especially when it goes up a pitch. Top stuff!