Tag Archives: Bramley apples

If you’re missing the sunshine…

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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!

From the other side of the world 2

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard about our friend (and musical collaborator) Paul Greenstein‘s garden in Melbourne, Australia. He’s sent us over a few pics and news of what he’s up to now. For around a year he’s been keeping bees.

“We started with a ‘nucleus’ hive, which is a small box with 5 frames. We’ve now grown to 3 full-sized boxes (supers), although we’ve packed the bees down into 2 boxes for the winter. For the bees, it’s about staying warm. From the beekeeper’s perspective, you want to make it easy for them to stay nice and toasty, and not to have to worry about heating a lot of empty space. Kind of like downsizing your house to save on the bills, except they keep warm by vibrating their flight muscles while keeping their wings still. Amazing little creatures.


We haven’t harvested any honey this time around, preferring to let the bees keep it for food during winter, building up a strong hive. We live very near a creek (basically a river, but not a very big one) – and there’s loads of stuff for bees to forage. Lots of Eucalypt trees, although there’s a particular type of Eucalypt called Stringybark or Messmate, which for some reason makes bees angry. Maybe they don’t like the way it smells. Hopefully they’ll avoid those and we won’t get stung by grumpy foragers…”

He also mentioned the subject of the last but one post about cicadas from Justin Patrick Moore:

“We get incredibly loud cicadas here – in fact they’ve been known to drown out conversation! Apparently the version we have here are called Greengrocer Cicadas, and can go up to 120 dB – louder than an ACDC gig. Our cats occasionally get fed up and swat them with a paw – they’ll go silent in shock for a few seconds, then start up again.”

Below is a pic of a Bramley apple that he’s put in as “You can’t get decent cooking apples over here!” We do like a cooking apple here especially in a crumble with custard! Do have a look at older posts about his garden here here and here.

And here’s a couple from Paul’s musical output, a lovely garden related tune called “Rose” that has a lovely ambient feel to it and one with a Jah Wobble type vibe called “White Blinds“, excellent stuff indeed!

As it says on his soundcloud “Sometimes inwards is the only way to go.” He and the bees are 100% correct! Cheers for the pictures Paul and keep us updated with how things are getting on!