Tag Archives: Beyond the wizzards sleeve

Beyond your back door

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Some very apt gardening advice for this time of year from the late great Percy Thrower at 2.19 mins in on the track Winter in June from Beyond The Wizzard’s Sleeve. “The more we do during the autumn and winter, the easier and better the gardening is throughout the rest of the year” and “There’s a tendancy to look out of the window in the month of January and say it’s a dit dull, it’s a bit murky outside, nothing of interest in the garden. If the garden is like that it’s not the fault of the garden it’s the fault of the gardener.” Wise words Percy!

In his lifetime he also uttered the great line “I’m a gardener. I’m not a celebrity, I’m not famous, I’m a gardener.” We very much doubt he’d be up for those very gripping “Big Brother”/”Castaway”/”Three celebrities left in a shed” type programmes if he was alive today.

And talking of Percy…

After the sun has gone

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Temples – Move with the Season (Beyond the Wizzards Sleeve remix) – Heavenly

It’s been a lovely day today so there’s been a bit of flymo-ing, weeding, sowing root veg of the beetroot and carrot variety and this evening, big action with the garden hose, all the while wondering if all those tales about watering in sunshine are true.

Then this evening it starts to chuck it down. Brilliant, as usual I am bang on with my timing. To accompany this tale of gardening woe here’s some mad Eroll Alkan/Richard Norris business on a well trippy tip and if it weren’t so blimmin warm I’d get me kaftan on. But then again if I did, I wouldn’t be able to give it large to the tune below.

Thanks to our good mate Will J for passing this mad tune on. Is that the sound of bagpipes? And I do love the punk rock style ending!

Elias Rahbani – La dance de Nadia

The best dressed chicken in town

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While looking through a 1960’s gardening book the other week I noticed that the chap who wrote it was photographed doing all the jobs in a lovely shirt & tie combo and sharply creased trousers. How the hell did he manage to work in all that get up?

When I was at the council there was a guy there who everybody knew as “Mr Clean”. He would always have on a crisp white shirt with a purple westminster council tie underneath his pristine council issue coach-drivers type jacket (which he’d get dry cleaned every few months!) There was a method behind his madness as when it came to working his excuse was that he couldn’t as he didn’t want to get his clothes dirty. It paid off as I never ever seen him do any. He was an expert with his custom made long-handled litter picker and could reach deep into bushes and shrubs to pick up coke cans/weeds without actually stepping on the soil, brilliant! I doubt if that sort of thing could happen today. Nice one Mr Clean!

Funnily enough last Thursday I chatted to another council gardener who was dressed unworkmanlike as well, in a lovely pink Lacoste polo shirt with the collars turned up (that isn’t going to get too dirty is it?). After watching him pull out summer bedding and perennials I asked him did they dump them like they used to do in my day at the council. I was pleased to hear they didn’t but composted all the bedding and gave away perennials including ornamental foliage plants to schools and charities. The usual practice years ago was to pull up the plants and spring bulbs and put them in brown sacks and give them to the binmen to take away but we’d give them out to keen gardeners we tipped off the day before while the gaffer weren’t looking. Waste not want not and all that!