A big thanks to our good friend Rich R up in the Lake District for sending over the photograph of his cosmos (and a shout to Debby H too, as the seeds came from her plants). Rich writes, “Really cold here today, wind chill feels like 2°C. With hard frosts and snow on the way, I thought I’d better send you this pic of the cosmos before it’s too late.”
Brilliant stuff, Rich – thanks again (and to Debby H) for sharing!
Big thanks to Debby H for sending us a great picture today (above) of possibly the last cosmos of the year in her garden. She said, “If the weather brightens up later on, I will go out and deadhead them, then maybe they will keep on flowering.” Great stuff! We hope they do keep flowering.
Now we love the cosmos, we can’t stop seeing them about. Here’s one spotted on our early morning travels in SE23 this week, they’re a bit blurred but you’ll get the gist.
And a few doors down we saw a nice raised (vegetable) bed with some trellis used as a squirrel, pigeon and general pest deterrent, what a clever idea.
And from gardening we move onto the subject of music which goes hand in hand here on Weeds. We heard Skinshape x Horus – N’Téro (feat. Modou Toure) on last week’s Ross Allen NTS show here and it’s a lovely slice of reggae! Catchy as anything too.
Here’s a nice bit of dub called Order Dub for a Saturday night off the Self-Titled EP from Nadia McAnuff & The Ligerians from SoulNurse Records out of Tours, France from the golden year of 2022. It’s a subtle bit of mixing but lots going on if that makes sense.
And we just found by pure chance now on Bandcamp a do over of a version of Dennis Walks‘ Heat Don’t Leap by the one and only Gregory Isaacs called Gone is the Love from a good few years ago. Great tune!
And funny enough there was a few cuts of the original “Heart Don’t Leap” and more great tunes on On The Wire the other week. Listen in here!
Do you reckon the weather will hold out for gardening tomorrow? It was perfect here this morning and afternoon. Fingers crossed!
Cheers to Mike & Julia from near Coventry for sharing a towards the end of season photographic report (fantastic pictures as ever Julia!) This is going to be a two parter as there’s so much good stuff been sent. Their comsos are looking fine (above and below).
Their garden doesn’t half look fine even at this time of year. We thought our garden was looking beyond repair but last weekend with a bit of a lawn cut and a trim and pulling out of the tomato plants and some dead heading it didn’t look too bad in the end but nowhere as great as these pictures.
We also love what we think is an echeveria (below) as those angular flowers look great and also those aster flowers (lower below).
Next part will include some dahlias amongst some other things. Keep them coming Mike & Julia and thanks again!
The back garden is in a bit of a mess at the moment as we haven’t been able to go out there as much as we would have liked to of late. There’s a still a couple of things that make us smile though. This morning we saw this cosmos (above), peeking through the broken paving slabs at the back of the pond after our “throw them everywhere” sowing experiments earlier this year.
The echinacea we got from B&Q (above) is still making a stand and hopefully if it don’t rot off over the winter due to the heavy soil here we’ve get more next year and the calendula (below) which was sown by the same method is great too. Do send us your end of season pictures (to one deck pete at gee mail dot com) and we’ll post them up.
Cheers to Debby H for getting out in the garden and taking some pictures for us now things are coming to a close but you wouldn’t think it with these photographs though.
Above are the cosmos that are still flowering and looking great and below are some cosmos deadheads which’ll be used for seeds. Debby told us you don’t even need to break the seed heads up that much, just put them as they come in a seed tray in the spring. We have to deadhead ours actually, before it starts getting wet and the chance of things going mouldy on us.
Last weekend we returned from a week away visiting some great East Sussex locations such as Camber Sands, Eastbourne and Brighton. Weather weren’t too bad (a bit of rain in the morning but usually sunny in the afternoon) but it has seemed to have changed when we got back home. Everything in the garden is now winding down, the tomatoes have their last fruit on them, the cosmos are still going (more on those later) and the giant sunflower (from seed bought off ebay) is doing great, following the sun as usual (more on that here).
We brought in the houseplants that were having a holiday outside, a chilli in a pot which will hopefully survive the winter and be back outside in the garden as they are technically perennials and even a couple of the pelargoniums taken from cuttings from the ones at the local train station. Why not? It’s nice to have a bit of the outside indoors.
Our north London correspondent Debby H has suggested we should get a page together of how people’s cosmos did this year and have a bit of a gallery going on and we think it’s a great idea. If the slugs got at your seedlings earlier on, don’t worry we will repeat it next year but any pictures of your cosmos to one deck pete (at) gee mail dot com please.
Also a massive shout and thanks to Jon Harris from the excellent multi-genre music show called Coughing Pigeon on Brum Radio here. On the 1st August show they played Madtone Safety Council V BiggaBush‘s Lock your bike at 01.15. The show continues in the usual unusual way with all sorts of great stuff from the dubby to this wonderful tune from Christie Laume called Rouge Rouge, wonderful stuff indeed.
As it says on the website “You should approach every Coughing Pigeon show with a degree of both certainty and curiosity about what you will hear. Household names feature alongside the relatively unknown in a quest to create a unique listening experience” and they are right!
A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures and an update of her garden up in north London. Just writing this now is making us think how fast this year is going, it’s nearly the end of August, it seemed like the start of the year not that long ago.
As Debby wrote accompanying her photographs “My Ornithogalum plant (above) now has 9 flowers. We never had 9 before!” It’s looking brilliant Debby.
The cosmos (above) are doing well. We have some of the same cosmos here and even the odd couple of plants we have it’s a welcome sight but a bed of them like above are well cheering to see. We need more cosmos growing everywhere!
“Finally, we have picked two of our pears. I didn’t know till recently that you pick them while they are still hard and let them soften up afterwards.” Brilliant stuff Debby, they look great. This gardening lark does reap rewards! Hope there’s more fruit to pick as the weeks progress, ta for the pictures Debby.
A big thanks to Debby H for starting this current wave of cosmos appreciation here at Weeds. Hers are presently looking great in situ (above).
We know a couple of us had some problems with slugs eating some of our seedlings but that’s not going to stop us trying again next year. We started off a good few but the only ones that survived were the plants under the dying cherry tree which are giving us a few nice blooms at the moment (above).
And above and below are from Mike & Julia‘s garden near Coventry. Great stuff!
Gardening is about having a go and if the slugs got your seedlings this year it doesn’t mean they will next year. Out with the beer traps and the copper tape and your other favourite anti-slug tricks and see what happens. Another good thing about the old horticulture is the practice of swopping and passing on plants and seeds. Keep the old circle going around! Cheers again to Debby H!
A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some garden updates over the weekend. Above is of the cosmos that is now coming into flower and will hopefully give a good show over the next few weeks.
The daisies (above) are doing great and attracting butterflies and bees and the above picture includes a gatekeeper butterfly.
As Debby told us “We have 3 ornithogalum flowers coming. These grow up to about 2 metres in height!” Here’s the link to what they looked like in September last year (here).
And above’s a picture of one of her dwarf sunflowers that has opened (it looks much better than our giant ones that went up to about 3 foot and had a small flower then just withered away) and (below) her first Capri Red Pepper. Excellent stuff Debby!
It has finally come, the day the first cosmos flower appeared. We may have lost a few plants to the slugs earlier on this year but the few we started off in pots and are now undernearth the dead cherry tree have got buds on them and this afternoon one actually opened. Cheers to Debby H for starting us off on this cosmos journey. Anyone else got any cosmos pictures to post up here? One deck pete at gee mail dot com if so.
And today also saw one of the cardoons showing their first purple dyed spikey top with more growth to come in time we hope. The bee on it seems happy enough.
And for a Saturday evening here’s a couple of excellent tunes, the first being from Cantoma (AKA Phil Mison The balearic fare dodger) called Light Before – Ambient Outro. It’s one piece of ambient chillout to end the day with!
And a lovely bit of dub from a set called Mid City Dub Encounters Vol.1 by Irie One and Lord Sekou on Jah Thunder Records and this track is called Kalimba Dub.
Weeds up to me knees 