Tag Archives: penstemons

Across the border

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We’ve had these plants in the soil for a year and a bit now and we are sure these are the penstemons we bought from QVC. Nothing happened last year and we were going to give up on them it now looks like they’re starting to give us a bit of a show. Here’s more about penstemons here. We’ve a few more of them dotted around the garden so hoping they all start taking off soon.

Here’s two tunes off the radio today. The first was heard on the excellent This is a music show (above) and it’s by Jackie Wilson and called You bought about a change in me and we don’t think we’ve ever heard it before even though it’s a bit of a classic and the B side of Reet Petite from a few years ago. It’s a tune! Cheers Your Host for playing it on the show. He’s right what he said that it put him in mind of The Supremes My world is empty without you.

And here’s something we’ve never heard before Sons of the Pioneers – Old Man Atom. Thanks to Justin Patrick Moore for linking us up to the Amsterdam Radio Collection (1991) on archive.org here. The track was played well speeded up on Maurice Di’s Happy Dirge Day recording at 19 minutes in. Crazy stuff!

And back to the garden, albeit the mad bit down the bottom, we’ve no idea what this wild plant is but it’s looking great and we reckon it came in on one of the Bees Bombs we got years ago or failing that a result of anarchic gardening, the scattering of seed from a random packet and hoping for the best.

Punk rock? That’s shallot

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As it was a glorious day yesterday we spent much of it tinkering about in the garden (above). Notice the hessian shopping bags (mid-centre left) hanging on the found-in-the-street tree-like coat stand. Those bags will be filled with Lidl’s best peat-free compost and contain potato plants in a few weeks time. Dada gardening at its best.

The shallots we put in a couple of weeks ago “under glass” (which is just an old window frame found in the street balanced on some house bricks) are off to a flying start. We’ve tried growing shallots before but they rotted even before they got this far so we must be doing something right this time.

We tided up the side bed by the Dad corner (below) and replanted a couple of penstemons we bought off QVC a year and a bit ago and also made some sort of bug hotel (there isn’t a roof on it so is that more of a bug campsite then?) Those giant garlic bulbs are now coming on a treat as well.

Also we cleared a little area by the pond (below) and added a mini veg bed. We stuck some large wire mesh (originally some shelves from our old mini-plastic green houses) over the top of it to deter the cats, putting in a line of old house bricks in helps visually section the area off too. It gets a bit of shade so we’re thinking the lettuce seeds we put should be okay as in full sun they tend to go to seed. Let’s see.

Hopefully we’ve another couple of days worth of gardening to do over Easter if this lovely weather holds out. Have a good Bank Holiday weekend!

Listening to last week’s On The Wire which has a deep dubby bias while we write this post. Well worth listening to as per. Big shout to Steve, Fenny and Jim.