Planting by the moon

Not a good time for flowering veg, but good for leafy veg.
Hmm. Regardless, sowed :

- Celery
- Lettuce
- Nigella
- Black Eyed Susan
- Busy Lizzie
- Cosmos
- Larkspur
- Aquilegia

First sowings

Sowed some seeds into modules indoors :

- Mangetout (Reuzensuiker)
- Cabbage (Langedijk 4)
- Broccoli (Brassica oleracea Italica)

(sound like good album titles to me)

..and two types of leek, in big yogurt pots :

- Leek (Carentan 2)
- Leek (Autumn Mammoth 2 - Snowstar)

(or at least track titles)

Albums Of The Year

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen
The Tuss - Rushup Edge
PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Efterklang - Under Giant Trees
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera


& failed to enjoy : LCD Soundsystem, Battles, Fiery Furnaces, Burial, Kate Nash, Jamie T, Mark Ronson et al

Crack open the sloe gin

Crack open the sloe gin and have a couple of listens to The Tuss - probably Richard James' alter ego - which finds its way to my ears. It's ok I suppose, but it just sounds like a lot of Ableton Live and a.n.other bit of software, with the same mashed beats and wafty pads. Don't get me wrong, it's still about the most important work to come out this year.

Good too, to hear a lot of Stockhausen on the radio, though it's a shame he had to die before that was possible. It's a guarantee of extra exposure, the dying game: Remember laughing with NJ @ Mouse Records back in '97, that it'd be the best way of marketing 'Baltic Beats'.

Oh dear - the Stockhausen's got a bit shouty now. Think I need to come back to earth with a mindless half hour of telly footy.

First frosts

Frost coming tonight, so I gathered up a few things from the allotment, including the last of the small pumpkins and dug up the vietnamese coriander bush to take home for the winter. I've already got half a dozen shoots in a jar of water which have sprouted taproots 3-4 cm long and are ready for potting up.
Never done so much faffing around before the first frosts - herded a load of potted plants indoors like sheep, some even though they don't really need it (olives, geraniums, parsley) and others to extend their lives a bit (lobelia, tomatoes, marigolds, dahlias). Wrapped up a couple of outside dahlias with bubblewrap, just to see whether I'll get the last buds to flower when it warms up a bit later in the week.

Late autumn sun

Late autumn sun ensures at least a couple of pumpkins mature in time for Halloween.
Sunflower heads in the shed had got damp and were starting to rot, so I sat in the sun separating a couple of hundred seeds.
Collected gladioli and rocket seeds too.
Planted out broad beans. The ones sown directly into the ground are finally emerging.
Harvested kale, rocket, lambs lettuce and a couple of carrots.

Sow when the moon is low

Peculiarly warm, dark, day, busy up the allotment :
Cycled with a bag of compost from home, dug a trench and buried it
Cleared more space and planted another 50 onion sets
Planted 24 garlic cloves
Planted a dozen broad beans in open ground & a few in a seed tray
Made a small bonfire
Skimmed off some pond weed
Harvested : a marrow shaped pumpkin, the rest of the late new potatoes, a parsnip, some rocket & the last cucumber.

Jorge Saxon / Galapagos Manufacture Remix

Jorge Saxon/Galapagos Manufacture Remix (edit) - mp3



Spent the last couple of weeks working on this remix for Jorge, who I met 17 years ago when I lived and worked in Poland and he was barely out of short trousers ! Apparently it's coming out on vinyl in Poland, together with other remixes - which is cool, 'cos I thought vinyl days were over. I'll be posting the whole track on MySpace soon.

When Badgers Attack

Argh! I had been warned, but didn't quite believe it would happen to me : The badger/s came for my ripe sweetcorn in the night, taking three or four which we were going to have for lunch. "At least someone enjoyed them", said my sweet, philosphical daughter.


Still loads of runners left - picked another kilo today.


Glad I made the effort earlier - about 20 giant Russian sunflowers made it past the slugs this year.


...and this pumpkin is out of the danger zone - I've lost three small ones to slugs.


Not quite a record breaker - the ruler was bendier than the bean!


Three or four tiny ridge cucumbers - hope it's not too late for them to mature.

Gorgeous Morning

Gorgeous morning, worth getting up early to enjoy. Harvested more runner beans, french beans, sweetcorn and raspberries up at the allotment and cut back my leeks, which are all infested with leek moth larvae. Checked on and watered the pumpkins - think about five might make it - cabbages, spinach, kale seedlings and carrots. Dug over a dry patch of ground, ready for something later in the month.

Afternoon and evening in the studio, writing, mixing and backing up as I go along.

CD Baby Payment

Hurrah ! Receive digital royalties and sales payments from 'CD Baby' in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. - Boo ! The buck is at a low against the quid.

Today's Harvest

- 750 g Raspberries
- 1 kg Runner Beans
- 1 Sweetcorn
- 500 g French Beans
- 3 stalks Rhubarb
- 6 cherry tomatoes
- 1 leek
- 1 bunch Vietnamese Coriander

Sad Mac : (

Unbelievable ! In the same week that the studio amp dies and there's a lengthy powercut, the screen on the Powermac 5500 dies.

I know it's had 8 years of service - and was a few years old when I bought it second hand for £600 - but I was starting to believe it would live forever. The screen's been flickering on start up for a couple of years or more and as soon as that started happening, I got prepared for it to die. However, slowly I got used to the occasional flicker, when it would sometimes warp back to front for a few seconds, which was quite spectacular !

This evening, I was resurrecting the latest track, editing sounds in the sampler, when the screen went to sleep. Foolishly, I immediately woke it up, which it didn't like at all : It blinked and then went black, dragging all the software and data with it into a deep, probably eternal slumber.

Just as well I've got the Powerbook 3400 for immediate SCSI and MIDI needs, though even the transition to that will take getting used to. Don't have a USB scanner or MIDI/audio interface for this Mac or the PC - but the time is fast approaching.

Sweetcorn

Harvested the first ripe sweetcorn today : Wow - how tasty was that ?
Also : 1 kg Raspberries
1 kg Cobra beans
2 kg Runner Beans

...and got given a beetroot on the way out : )

Took some of the compost from my compost heap at home and dug it into the plot.

Blown Amp

Kenwood amplifier has stopped working : ( Don't think it was being overloaded. Strange thing was, after it stopped working a display light was still lit, albeit not showing what it should have, but when I turned it off and turned it back on half an hour later, there was no display light.

There was a smell of burning bakelite, or similar. I checked the fuse in the plug and googled for some help. After a while, I dug out a spare amp and got on with some work. Hope I can repair it, especially if it turns out to be something fairly simple, like an internal fuse, but as it's around ten years old it might be difficult to get spares.

Reasonably good replacements are fairly cheap - but I'd like to avoid being a consumer.

What's more, it belonged to a good friend and has sentimental value.

Plums

Fantastic weather at last - I've managed to spend quite a few hours up at the allotment this week. Harvested around 5 kilos of plums and a kilo of greengages today, which I'm turning into jam. Gave some to the women at the bowls club next door, who wanted to pay me for some at first. Also gave some to my elderly neighbour and left some out on the wall at the front of the house. Think I'll take them in later if they haven't gone, before they get chucked about by the Friday night crowd.

Did a lot of watering - rocket, lambs lettuce, carrots, kale & cabbage seedlings, young fruit bushes, leeks, sweetcorn, pumpkins, cucumber. Shame my kohl rabi never made it past the slug onslaught. Picked some dwarf beans, runners, a couple of courgettes and some raspberries.

Echinacea

August Harvest

Roland From Poland - August (edit) mp3

Sweet peas

Courgettes, carrots, rhubarb, gladioli, sweet peas...

Plums & Greengages

Artichokes

Not sure which is best - the visual delight of a mature artichoke flower, or the unique texture and flavour of an unopened one.

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