We’ve got your number

 

Cheers to our good music/gardening/radio friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending over this musical recommendation in an ambient downbeat style called The haunted testcard tapes by Alpha Seven. Haunted Testcard is a lovely bit of electronica and a great one to drift off to. By the way the cover of the LP is great too!

There’s another testcard connection as Pete Roberts of Alpha Seven was also a member of Testcard F, remember them?

 

The next we’ve chosen (above) is a numbers stations related tune and you know we love one of them here. There’s quite a few on Bandcamp if you tap in “Numbers Stations” under the search. Some are of an industrial or harsh experimental nature which all have their place but it is nice to hear something in a more chilled out style. The track even has some morse in there as well. Double radio-related bonus. Cheers for the musical tip Justin.

And by the way if you want to get into a saturday spy mode, pretend you are secret agent 001 and fancy listening to some numbers stations have a look here and see if there’s a transmission coming up.

Don’t worry you don’t need a shortwave radio hidden in a bar of soap or disguised as a loaf of Hovis to listen in, just click the link ( in blue under “Next station in so and so minutes”) and it will bring you to a online SDR (software defined radio) all ready tuned in and ready to decode. Make sure you have a biro and a rough book at the ready.

The fruits of our labour

We can’t believe that it’s July next week, how time flies (pic above: self-seeded poppy down the garden yesterday). It was just the other week we were thinking if there was going to be a frost or not so we could put those leggy tomato plants out. Gardening is all about patience and just getting on with it, the waiting game so to speak but we’re not very good at that. And talking of tomatoes we’ve got our first trusses of fruit developing on some of the plants we grew from seed (below). That weekly feed of comfrey liquid must be helping as well as sideshooting and a daily water.

The chilli pepper we were given the other week has now got fruits (below) and we were told by the patron of said plant that she started it off very early in January. We’ll be bringing the pot in this winter and see if we can keep it going next year. Peppers and chillies are perennials so we’re told, as it says here “...all peppers – that is sweet peppers and chilli peppers – are perennials, capable of living for several years. Peppers come from the tropics where there is no winter period.” The things you learn eh?It’s funny what with our “sow the seed willy nilly and forget we even sown them” method we still get suprised when something pops up like in the case of the oregano seedlings below. Yes it is in a pot with a plant label with “Oregano” written on it as clear as day but we’re still suprised. Perhaps we should have a colour coded spreadsheet with a map of the garden so we know when we sowed something and where. We reckon that would take the fun out of it though. Happy growing and may that spot of rain we had earlier today further boost up your garden’s growth!

A tune for a frosty morning

It was a lovely day yesterday, the sun was out and it looked like spring had finally sprung but the lack of cloud last night gave us a bit of frost this morning. As Shaw Taylor used to say about watching the weather forecast especially after putting plants in “Keep ’em peeled”. And here’s a nice tune…

Music, music and more music

Last night when researching the next mix for the shortwaves we came across the wonderfully brilliant The Sound of Shellac from Norway on Bandcamp. Talk about an eclectic mix of musical madness and available in a name your price style. Here’s a few of our favourites but do have a look at the site and explore!

They’re just hanging around

Big shout to Gerry Hectic for sending us a nice pic of his newly acquired Aldi hanging baskets (bought for the shocking sum of £3.99 each) hung from some old pipe he buffed up which are mounted on his smart garden shed with a couple of hangers from £stretchers for £1.99. Who said you had to pay for the nose for some smart looking gardening eh? Also ta to Gerry for sending us this recommendation the greatly named set on Bandcamp called The Indoor Gardener by Double Geography. Some nice tunes here, loving the opener Yucca but it’s all excellent garden related named business! Play it all the way through when giving your plants a touch of baby bio. #musicandgardeningdomix

A healthy dose of goodness and light

Here’s a  lovely piece of ambience from about : forest off their Bandcamp release The Land of Three Moons on Dewtone Recordings out of Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s called Calling Light and if all goes well will find itself on a forthcoming mix for Free Radio Skybird. A track to drift off to and dream about a return of some good gardening weather!

A Sunday night odd sausage

It’s been another weekend of non-gardening as the weather’s been of the “something to be desired” variety but never mind, here’s a lovely tune from Monster Rally called Sunny Sloth that’ll make you smile! It’s off their new LP The Flowering Jungle released just last week. If you like nice exotic sunny type loops over lazy beats and catchy melodies that’ll stick in your mind, this set is for you. For further investigation have a look at their bandcamp page here. 

Those dahlias that have turned black due to frost damage that should’ve been pulled up over the weekend and dried off for winter storage will soon be forgotten about after listening to Monster Rally! #musicforgardenerswholovesunshine