The RHS Award Of Garden Merit - Chilean Potato Tree

The end of April has seen our Chilean Potato Tree (or Solanum Crispin 'Glasnevin') come back into flower. This is a stunning plant, which maintains its green all year round, and in April and May has hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny purple and yellow blooms on it. It really is a simple way to get a real splash of vibrant colour in our garden. It's such a simple plant to maintain that it has been awarded the RHS Award Of Garden Merit. According to the RHS the AGM is intended to be of practical value to the home gardener. It is awarded therefore only to plants that meet the following criteria:

• It must be of outstanding excellence for ordinary garden decoration or use.
• It must be readily available
• It must be of good constitution
• It must not require highly specialist growing conditions or care and
• It must not be particularly susceptible to any pest or disease

Reading between the lines I believe that this description could be replaced by 'Even an Idiot should not be able to kill it'!

The Chilean Potato Tree that runs along our back fence has survived quite a deal since we moved in. It survived being ripped off the fence and crudely replaced by the folks who replaced the fence without giving us notice, followed by a lot of work, by us to replace it correctly:

It has come back stronger than ever despite several of the main plant stems being snapped in half.

It basically grows like a weed and grows excessively come Spring and Summer. I gave it its first well needed trim this past weekend, to ensure it doesn't sprawl over into the next door garden. I am sure I will be back clambering up the ladder and risking life and limb to trim it again in about a months time! Although an idiot might not be able to kill it, it certainly has the ability to kill an idiot who falls off a ladder trimming it! ;-)

And the trimmed plant, it doesn't take long to look chaotic again ;-)

A really nice plant though if you are prepared to spend the time trimming back in the warmer months!

Have fun.

Cheers

m

P.S. Another snap from last year,

Testing Blogging From The Android Blogger App

A quick test of Android's Blogger app to see how easy it is to post from mobile. It does seem very easy although there are fewer editoral options when compared to the web. Fair enough I guess ;-)

It does allow you to save though so you could save, get home and edit on a PC and then publish.

The Android app does allow for the addition of photos and location which I will test now ;-)

That's all for now. As I said only a test ;)

Cheers

M

Someone In Brentham Garden Estate Is Making Some Magnificent Hybrids

I might like my little experiments in the garden but these fail in comparison to some of the hybrid work that someone is performing in Brentham Garden Estate! The above seems to be a cross between about 8 different plants and a deck shoe wearing Cousin It from the Addams Family! A seriously wild hybrid. Here I am rabbiting on about three different types of hedge cuttings. Seriously I have a lot more to learn in the garden!

OK, so I am not sure if this actually is a hybrid, although I cannot confirm that it isn't, but it is indeed Jack-In-The-Green who is part of the annual Brentham May Day, that occurred on Saturday May 14th just past. It doesn't say in the description of the Brentham May Day that Jack-In-The-Green isn't a hybrid ;-).

Looking at the history of the Brentham May Day, there is also nothing there to suggest that Jack-In-The-Green is or isn't a hybrid of some description. What it does show is that Jack made a first appearance in 1919! Given his age, now 92, he is still a very spritely chap!

Below are a few more pictures from the Brentham May Day. First the head of the parade,

followed by the band,

followed by the procession,

and the return to the Brentham Club,

and the Brentham club itself,

Quite an interesting day! Especially given the hybrids on show! ;-)

Have fun,

Cheers

m

May Is The Month For Roses In Our Garden

The end of April and beginning of May has seen the roses in our garden bud and come into bloom. The above photo is of the potted old timer rose. Such a stunning flower! Only 10 days ago it was only just coming out. If you look closely below you can actually see the green aphids dining out on the new growth!

The climbing rose over the garage is also putting on a great show. 10 days ago it looked as below:

A few days later it has come right into bloom

and another few days later many more are in the picture!

Finally the rambling rose on the back fence is also making an appearance. From 10 days ago

to today, there are a few in bloom but many more on the way.

I don't think I cut back this rambling rose enough though last Autumn. Almost all of the flowers are growing right at the top of the fence with very few, if any actually blooming up the fence.

When it finishes this year I think it will be cut back a lot more than I managed last year! School boy error I guess. Not having really looked after roses before, you don't really have the confidence to hack the plant back to oblivion! I might go half way there, if half way to oblivion is an actual destination ;-), this year and see the results next! ;-)

have fun

Cheers

m

The Last Word On Hedge Cuttings

Yeah right! Unlikely! I do need to post results based on the best approach for cuttings at some later stage ;-). I have also taken a third lot of cuttings, seen above. These I took on Saturday just before I finally got to finish off trimming the second half of the hedges. At last the wind has died down and the rain held off so I was able to get out and complete the job! With these cuttings I am going to attempt to root in water and once they have rooted I will transfer into pots. This will give me three different methods to compare for best results for next time:

1. Bung the cuttings in a pot with standard garden compost and water regularly
2. A more conventional method of growing cuttings, using seeding compost, vermiculite and rooting gel and
3. Attempting to root the cuttings in water prior to following step 2 again.

Lets see which works best. Will keep you posted in the months ahead.

Have fun,

Cheers

m

Addition: So I published this on about the 12th of May. Then Blogger had its 20 plus hour outage on the 13th of MAy and it disappeared! Turns out it was put into draft mode and so was simply hidden. Oh well published again now.

I Don't Really See The Point Of Google Music.... For Now.

To be fair I have not played with it so this is possibly a little harsh ;-) Google Music was unleashed as a US invite only beta at Google IO yesterday. It allows up to upload up to 20,000 songs to the cloud and then you can play them across any of your devices. OK sounds reasonable but it means that you still have to buy all of the music you want to listen to and you only have access to what you own (No I am not suggesting illegally downloading is an option here ;-)). This is a fairly traditional way of interacting with your music. You buy it, play it and most of the time move on.

Compare this to Spotify. On Spotify there is no need to 'own' a piece of content. It's a streaming service that allows you the same sorts of interaction as you have in iTunes, i.e. creating playlists and building up a library of music you like. Then you can play it across any of your mobile devices through a dedicated native app. To have unlimited access to music, i.e. the number of times you are allowed to play a particular tune, you need a premium account, which currently runs at £10 a month, but that is relatively cheap if you are a traditional music consumer, i.e. purchasing content on iTunes or even the old tech buying of CD's.

Spotify also allows you to download tracks for offline use, if your device is not connected to the internet, in the same way that Google music will let you. I guess the question is, 'Is it necessary to actually own digital content?'. When there is a streaming service is as good as Spotify I would answer, 'No it's not'.

Google music, in my view, would have been great about 3 years ago. In an era of streaming services though, to me at least, it just doesn't make sense. I guess though the next obvious step for Google Music is to offer a streaming music service as well. Since they also announced movie rental services at Google IO as well, I guess music cannot be too far behind! Are there any Google folks knocking on Spotify office doors yet? ;-) Guess now Skype has gone to microsoft there should be a few deal makers free :-))

Oh and as @throg points out, Spotify isn't perfect! There is still loads of stuff, including AC/DC, that is not available on Spotify. That being said Spotify do allow you to ingest the music you own into their service as well. For me this is a stop gap until they do have rights to stream more ;-)

Anyway for now, especially as I don't have an invite to the US only Google Music Beta, I don't think I will be uploading all of my accumulated digital content to the cloud. I guess most of it is already there anyway as I can stream it from Spotify ;-)

Have fun

Cheers

m

P.S. Ha! I guess with the announcement of Google Chromebook this does fit in nicely ;-). Everything in the cloud, playable on every device including your Chromebook. Still I don't see the need to own digital content when it is far simpler to stream it.

A Quick Virgin Media Tivo Review

I have had Virgin Media's Tivo for a couple of weeks now. I am not going to bore you with a massively long review of it as there are plenty of those elsewhere, but I do really like the system. The user interface is intuitive, I love the search functionality (Hey I found re-runs of Babylon 5 on FX - it must be good!), and even the recommendations are OK. Sometimes it's a little slow loading menus however never frustratingly so and the Youtube integration is cool as well. So a few good points and a few points where it might be improved. It can be improved with software updates over the wire after installation.

First the good!

• Searching for TV shows, Browsing through the guide and TV on demand, and Youtube integration as mentioned are intuitive and pretty cool. It's nice to be able to search for what you are looking for, as opposed to trawling through an endless EPG! Although text input is not exactly fun without a keyboard, but you get used to it and it's not as if you write novels on the remote control ;-). Also great that search is based on live TV as well as TV on demand.
• I love being able to set up recordings via Virgin Media's website. If you forget something you can set it from your PC. It's not exactly user friendly on a mobile device, as its a flash heavy website but it does work on an HTC Desire S web browser via WiFi. I could not get it to set a recording via the iPhone. The EPG dumbs down on an iPhone due to lack of flash support in the browser but it wasn't this that prevented recording it was the fact that for some reason, while on an iPhone it could not determine if my Tivo at home was powered on or not. Recording via your mobile as mentioned is not exactly user friendly at this stage but @VirginMedia on twitter did confirm that they are working on Android and iPhone apps to support this. Look forward to seeing those. It sort of needed as Sky has this functionality available on iPhone ;-)
• Being able to define wish lists based on show, actor, director or genre is also very cool. Simply add the name of an actor and everything that he is in will be recorded to the hard drive. Nice. Again you don't have to trawl endlessly through the EPG to find something.
• Although it's trivial I really love the fast forward 30 seconds button on the remote control. When the add breaks come you quickly learn how many times you need to push the button to skip through the add break to get back to the show on the exact right spot in the recording. For Babylon 5 this is typically 8 clicks every add break for those of you that want to know ;-) . Such simple functionality but such a bonus! You never inadvertently miss the restart of your show after the ads ;-)

On the negative side I really think Virgin Media missed a trick with Social Network integration. The Twitter app is pretty useless if I am honest. You can only see the last 10 tweets in your tweet stream which is mostly irrelevant if you follow loads of people. What I would like is an integration with the EPG such that you can share program details with friends and also an integration with twitter hash tags for specific shows. This would require minimal real time configuration on Virgin Media's side to keep hash tags for popular shows up to date but if the app then allowed you to follow real time tweets with real time TV that would be huge! So much TV now is shared in real time on twitter that it is an obvious next step for Tivo I hope.

Another small gripe is that BBC iPlayer isn't integrated in the catch up services menus. Instead it has its own stand alone app in the apps section. Why? Sure once you know it's OK, but iPlayer is catch up TV at its best so why segregate it?

It's still very early days for the service though, so perhaps it'll be introduced down the track. Overall it's a great start and the platform itself is updatable over the internet so it's forseable that loads of improvements are hopefully on the way!

I am still hoping that Google TV actually does something in Europe. Is it ever going to be released here? Maybe some kind of announcement at Google IO this year? If it is it should drive competition and innovation further on Tivo as well so that would be nice ;-) How about developer API's such that Developers can create apps that run on Tivo as well?

Anyways gotta dash and I did promise this would not be too long ;-) Chores await!

Have fun!

Cheers

m