The bugs are biting

(Photo by Mil)

It's gardening time of year again. Being just a little less than green-fingered, my propagation of nature tends to weigh heavily on the side of enthusiasm, but is occasionally found lacking in terms of persistence and skill. That said, we have (with little to compare it to) an excellent crop of tasty tomatoes (which need using actually, mental note), a pepper well on its way, even chillies and olives. A squirrel (now issued with a fatwa) made off with the head of one of our sunflowers, but it looks as though one is about to burst into life. Good stuff.

However, the next major project is due to our Greek-Rigsby styled landlord, who was less than impressed at the housemate's removal of the garden path. Liability and health hazard though it was, it was at least a path. So, a new one is in order, leading to my first, tentative steps into the world of garden design. A subject foreign to me, it is none the less one in which I have picked up tips via osmosis, many being the occasion at my parents house when a gardening show on the telly would distract me from my book/sleep/food. So - trips to Homebase are on the cards, we'll soon have a melange of sand, gravel and paving to explore the garden with.

All last evening's activity inevitably led to a fairly impressive series of insect bites, hence the situation coming still to mind. It does, though, give me the opportunity to post songs from maybe my favouritest band in the world, Mogwai. In Cornwall, there's a tourist attraction named The Lost Gardens Of Heligan, a fairly over-dramatic name for a garden if you ask me. I don't know what's there. It always reminds me of Mogwai, indeed one of there more famous early tracks (check the track title).

That would be a tenuous link indeed, though, so I'll bolster it with the fact that the song refers to exactly what I was creating (albeit not to the song's stated location).
I've included several versions here, as there's two parts to the song. It doesn't appear on any of the band's standard full-lengths, and the original versions I have here are those on the collection of early EPs, Ten Rapid. The live versions are from Mogwai's excellent BBC sessions album, Government Commissions, and the remix by Max Tundra is from Kicking A Dead Pig, the Mogwai remix album. All excellent: Part 2 is the sort of subtle, all-quiet Mogwai moment (although mercilessly and brutally chopped and changed by Max Tundra), but Part 1 is the classic Mogwai hail-of-beautiful-sound, the sort of song Windows Media Player visualisations are made for.
NB - the songs are labelled slightly differently on each release, but they're all versions of the same songs...

Mogwai - Helicon 1 (from Ten Rapid)
Mogwai - New Paths To Helicon Pt.1 (from Government Commissions)
Mogwai - Helicon 2 (from Ten Rapid)
Mogwai - New Paths To Helicon Pt.2 (from Government Commissions)
Mogwai - Helicon 2 (Max Tundra remix)

<$>Mogwai/Max Tundra<$>

Tags: Mogwai; Helicon; Max Tundra; path; garden; gardening; bugs