Rusted Root....love umm...Five for Fighting..Maroon 5..Anything by James Taylor..Al Jarreau..Neil Young..Diane Ziegler..lots of others, just depends on the mood.

Well, speaking of Click and Clack, I kindasorta simplified things... when I remember to turn the radio on (which USED to be all the time, but not as much here lately), it's pretty much always tuned to public radio, which in my case usually means either classical music, or news.

The exception is weekend nights, when they play some pretty funky stuff I don't care for, and Saturday afternoons (just never HAVE been able to get into opera)... If I have "stuff" to do to music on a Saturday afternoon and don't have CDs handy, I revert to my old standby of the "classic rock" station, which seems to NEVER change, meaning I STILL like only part of it...

But I MUST tell ya, Termater, ANY music that can make lettuce and cabbage snap its fingers and tap its toes like that -- not to mention wear old-style "square" sneakers -- well I'm all for that!
:)

I usually listen to public radio, too. Either that or Eva Cassidy. She's spoiled me for anyone else.

I am afraid that I like to garden without the radio. I play it all the time everywhere else, but I enjoy listening to the birds and the sound of the water fountains and wind chimes when I am "communing with Nature." Trina

anything "blues" here!! :-)
Bill in SC

I do most of my gardening on Saturdays which means "Going Across the Mountain" from WNCW is playing on the old stereo in the shed.
Good Bluegrass.

Rip

I don't listen to music too often while I am out as it is usually in the early morning to ward off the heat. But in early spring and fall if I have a lot to do out there I will listen to some. My musical taste is very eclectic. I will usually listen to some old Bonnie Raitt, Scriabin, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, Bette Midler, Berlioz, Jean Luc Ponty, Dr. John, Carlos Santana...The list goes on and on.

JP

I have close neighbors and since I hate when I'm forced to listen to their music, I make a point of never making them listen to mine. And honestly, I wouldn't play music while gardening anyway. I'm like you, gardningfool. I prefer the birdsong, the breeze in the trees and the sound of the water in the pond...
Now, housework - that's a different story - gotta have music. And loud! I love nearly all kinds of music.

I either listen to the nature around me (including the sounds of my kids while they "nap"), or I bring out my iPod shuffle. That way I can listen to whatever I want and my neighbors don't have to hear any of it. It's good for drowning out my constantly arguing neighbors who have every "discussion" and phone call outside on their front stoop. Delightful.

Karen

Vollenweider (remember him?) or like Bill, anything blues, especially john lee hooker or muddy.

Hey Bill, I was serious when I offered you my cactus. If you ever get near Summerville, let me know .. they are yours if you want them.

X

a country music station is usually on in the garage and is loud enough to be heard from various gardens (no close neighbors) Saturday morning is the 3 hour garden show out of Raleigh with the headphone radio on so I don't miss any questions. Sunday afternoon is Nascar Racing during the racing season

The music we listen too depends on the "Job". With outdoor speakers...hooked up to the indoor stereo.....If it is mulching...planting....digging....it is usually rock....CD's.... "Stevie Ray Vaughn.....AC DC.......anything loud.!! For weeding....watering....it is classical or bluegrass.....from the cable channels..........relaxing at the end of the day: Pink Floyd......Jethro Tull......any pick!! Usually CD's......Always have music on in the garden!!!.........Dianne

termater..I think I read you are in Southern Pines area..I am just north of you in Star..I listen to 101.1..Talk weekdays and Jazz on the weekends..You can actually learn a lot from Talk radio. I believe you can recieve the station in your area..And like lynnencfan..NOTHING while NASCAR is on!!

I'm a public radio fan also. That way the neighbors just think I have friends chatting with me on my porch instead of blaring music they might not like.
Distant from an outlet and the radio, I do take along earphones and listen to music. Tried listening to books on tape while gardening but found them too distracting.

I tend to move around so much that if a radio was on it would have to be really loud or portable. I usually listen to any station that will come in clearly when I'm in the shed potting stuff up.

Gardningfool has witnessed first hand that I keep a large fan hooked to a long extension cord so it would drown out the music anyway. The fan usually stays in the shade under the trees but if the skeeters are rabid the fan has been known to travel the aisles with me while I weed.

I have a pair of Wood Thrushes that sing all the time and are so tame they aren't more than 20 feet away most of the day.

Wish I could listen to nature but we are in a hollow and pick up the bombing echos from Ft Bragg, especially when the A10's fly over and Kaboom.

Loud music is my only defense against it.

wow,termater.. sounds like your sanctuary is all visual.
Maybe you could play CD's of bird sounds. I have some and it drives my cats crazy looking for the birds,crickets and frogs singing.

i love most any music and have it on all day in the house. classical, 'the river', jazz, eclectic, you name it, plus clark howard. but i never bother in the yard- too much out there to listen for. today it was the bluebirds & chipping of the hummingbirds drinking salvias. drunk bees buzzing & dragonflies whizzing by. and the pond's burbles, of course. i've learned to ignore all but the loudest of the cars whizzing by on the road. i can only work in the shade & when it's cooler, so i rarely get out for more than 4 hrs at a time anyhow.

we deliberately leave our window cracked just enough at night so we can hear the waterfall, frogs, toads, crickets, cicadas & whatever else is serenading us by moonlight. sometimes we even hear owls.

the bird cd idea is a hoot! i can just see a bemused cat going bonkers. hee hee.

I do most of my gardening on Saturday mornings before I go off to play golf in the afternoon. Here in Charlotte we have two garden shows on the radio on Saturday, 8-10am on WBT 1110AM and 106.1FM from 10-12am so I get informed while I work, although I get annoyed in the fall when people are contantly calling in with questions on how to grow grass. I say "kill the grass and grow flowers!"
So anyway, other than the garden shows I listen to a wide variety of music, just about anything but headbanger or rap. In the summer I kinda like some steeldrum music on occasion.

I listen to NPR now all the time. But I used to listen to rock music CD's nonstop...Pearl Jam, the band Live, Edwin McCain, Black Crowes, Incubus, Matchbox Twenty, native son Ben Folds. This music was sort of inappropriate in the garden, but like anything else "in the garden," it's purely the gardener's choice, however gaudy or discordant it may be.

I find a learn a lot more listening to public radio. I love "Fresh Air" and Diane Reem's show on issues.

"Tintinabulation," with sets of speakers set up throughout the garden to give a fairly constant even level of sound and played just loud enough to have an almost constant harmonic and ambience," put on continous play for the day... after a while, the whole "space, itself," will seem to change.

I play it for sleeptime sometimes, and occasionally on continuous play... wake up with it still, softly going, whole player lightly vibrating, whole room feeling like it has the lingering soft vibration of gentle bells...

Tryit, you'll like it.
:)

Very cool. Are your speakers waterproof? I'm challenged technically, so that might be a very dumb question.

No, Claire, my speakers aren't waterproof, and to be honest, I've not actually tried that in the garden, yet, but have tried it in the house, on occasion, putting the CD on continuous play and letting it go for hours...

Note that when "Tintinabulation" first came out in the late '70s, it was described on the liner notes more as "environmental sound" than as "music," as it's simply a half dozen VERY LARGE (room-sized) bells, struck softly, at random, with the tones electronically lengthened so they last several minutes each, and overlap... Back in those days, the LP came with a warning NOT to play it very loudly on any but a very HIGH-END stereo system, as some of the bell tones were very low frequency and could overload an amplifier and/or set up resonances in speakers that could destroy the amplifier, speakers, or both, if played to loudly for too long...

Good advice, anyway, as this is something you want played softly enough where it sort of blends into the background and you can often even forget it's there until a new, louder or more pleasingly resonant tone sounds... I swear after a couple hours of this going constantly you start to feel like your whole environment has changed (this is part of the "Environments" series of recordings, which also included things like a recording of a dawn at a small pond in springtime, thunderstorms, ocean waves crashing, and so forth... This recording was the only one in the series, as far as I remember, that was of "man-made" sounds, and by FAR the most "mood-inducing" of the bunch... I just put it on continuous play for sleep again last night... I seem to sleep better with this on (very softly) than with just about anything else.

I DO plan to try it in the garden at some point... maybe soon... but as for having several sets of speakers set up around the garden where I can create the whole "ambient, surrounding atmosphere" I talked about above, I don't have the money to do that at this point... If someone does, I'd suggest trying it, however.

In my case, when I do it, it'll just be one little cheap boom box on the patio, and with all the local traffic and stuff, I probably won't hear it all the time.

By the way, I play it so softly as I sleep, that I generally only hear the new tones, too -- not all the lingering overtones -- at least not consciously -- but they're there, if my cheap little bedside CD player can reproduce them, that is.

Happy Listening!
Jeff

I often ignore my auditory sense...I tend to be all visual, and then I remind myself. This has an upside since I've never been bothered by noise while others are just ready to spit.

You make a good point about one's environment, sorta like feng shui. We should take care of our auditory, olfactory and tactile senses on the homebase, not just the lookey.

I will keep that in mind, sc guru

my neighbor has outdoor speakers that look like boulders. they're waterproof - they've got them tucked here and there throughout the yard and i reap the benefit of their good taste (usually) in music :) when i'm taking breaks or just relaxing on the cabin porch, i listen to NPR. there's something about "prairie home companion" that suits the cabin atmosphere.
marsha

Okay, I'm the Nerd in this group... I listen to books on tape with my much battered Walkman. Not just while I garden, but while I clean house, cook dinner and walk the dogs. It's Amazing! how many books I can "read" in the 3 week library loan period. I can only manage one (short) book per 3wks if I have to actually sit and read.

I have plenty of nature sounds here. I have a Mockingbird that seems to think it is suppose to announce all of my comings and goings and give me an opinion to boot. Love it.

a mockingbird refuses to be ignored - they're a presence, most definitely.

hmm i wonder if dirr's on tape.

Ha ha if Dirr's on tape it's probably a six or ten-pack. :) His manual is almost 1200 pages long, on typing-paper-sized pages. It's not the dry reference book you might think, he's a very good writer and his love of plants really comes through. He's even funny. The Manual is an especially valuable source for gardeners in our area since he lives in zone 7b in Georgia. I wonder if a new edition is going to come out soon -- the last one was revised in '98.

Cory, what have your ears been reading lately? I tried that once in the car and really enjoyed David Sedaris' humorous essays.

He's from Raleigh and if you are possibly unfamiliar, he's a hoot...'Barrel Fever' is on DVD and probably others.

My most recent CD is John Fogerty "Blue Moon Swamp". I highly recommend it for soothing/exhilirating gardening.. :-)
Bill in SC

Jeff hasn't been around in the past few days, but I was totally reminded of him by a "scary story" on NPR's Weekend America today. The name of the story is "The Green Mist." I highly recommend it not so much for its scare factor, but b/c of the talent of the storyteller and the subject matter.

peace, claire in sanford

Here is a link that might be useful: The Green Mist

I've heard Sedaris only on NPR, largely on "This American Life," and I agree, he IS a hoot.

As for John Fogerty... never mind...

I'd prefer some Enya, or perhaps some Pink Floyd... Mozart, Stravinsky, Sibelius... Keiko Matsui, Phillip Glass! :)

So much is so common... I try to find the uncommonly good amongst the already uncommon and hold fast to it :)

And speaking of which, as Langston Hughes said...

Hold fast to dreams,
for if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly

Peace
Jeff

Saw Fogerty and Mellencamp in concert this summer in Raleigh. Fogerty stole the show! What a great, energetic entertainer and Musician ! I call them the "Old Man" concerts (Of course this is all from my generation....so I fit right in). We have seen plenty over the years.....recently the Allman Brothers Band in Raleigh....another great show. These Musicians have many years of practice under their belts!

As far as the garden goes........today as I was trimming and prunning out some of the "tired" perennials from summer. I had on Bluegrass...one of my favorites....from the cable channels. Next time it might be Jazz, or Classical! Just depends on the workload and how hard I need to work!...........Dianne

Jeff, someone really must find you a nice girl...how can so much sensitive, intelligent male be wasted! Oh well, for the time being, just more for Tater to love.

I'm beginnin' to think I'm gettin' too old and worn out to keep waitin' for nice girls...

Like Pink Floyd in "The Wall," I think "I need a dirty woman!"

But if most of that dirt's under her fingernails from gardening while listening to NPR, I'll be right happy, too! :)

Oh, as for bluegrass, Dianne, LOVE instrumental bluegrass... not particularly fond of MOST vocal music in most any genre, with a few exceptions, such as Enya, Pink Floyd, Yes, early Kansas and some of Mellencamp's stuff... Aerosmith... quite a few, when you break it down, BUT not nearly so much as most folks, who seem to think a song ain't a song without a singer... and I don't wanna start a war here, but I didn't think so in the 60s and 70s, and I STILL don't think Fogerty could carry a tune in a bucket.

He sounds like an out-of-tune SOMETHING being played by someone in GREAT pain to me... besides, he never lived anywhere CLOSE to a bayou...

Want bayou songs, listen to Jerry Reed :)

I want a good-quality DVD of the Francis Ford Coppolla/Philip Glass collaboration, "Koyaanisqatsi," which is like a 90-minute minimalist classical music/hopi Indian music video, very slow moving and rythmic at times, followed by some fast-paced movements and.... well, you'd just have to see it... Takes patience to watch it if you don't like this sort of thing.

I rented it on videotape way back when it was new, in the mid-80s, but the sound and picture quality weren't up to the standards I'm pretty sure I'd see on a DVD... Some of it is breathtakingly scary, such as the one tranquil beach setting that suddenly turns to something altogether different.

Of course I could listen to the Philip Glass soundtrack most any time... Have yet to hear the Glass I don't like and I consider him the most important "modern" classical composer of the second half of the 20th century -- at least that I've heard... He still does interviews and such on NPR sometimes, too... and seems like just a regular guy... still teaches, composes and conducts.

There's so much out there so many people don't even know if they like or not, because they never get exposure to it... Hope some of y'all will click on the link to Philip Glass' website.

Musically yours,
Jeff

Here is a link that might be useful: Philip Glass

Usually in the garden if I want music other than wind, bugs clicking, birds trilling, and shelties barking, I sing. Sometimes its broadway, or pop, or rock, or country, or the anthem from church....whatever pops into my head at the moment. The neighbors haven't put together a lynch mob yet, so it must be OK or not loud enough to cause pain.

My son, on the other hand, tends to sing along with his Rio MP3 player. He has a great voice, the only problem is that once earphones go in his pitch goes HAYWIRE and the volume goes LOUD.

LOL, maybe I'll videotape him sometime so he can hear the pain he is generating.

:-)

Granite, you're just too cool... nothin' cooler than someone just singing when they're happy in the yard... as for your son, on the other hand, I think you should videotape him but send the tape to ABC... sounds like a shot at $10,000 to me :)

I love it all....country, rock, blues, classical and everything under the sun especially Mariah Carey. There is a new pop vocalist that I really love. Her name is Chantal Chamandy and her new CD is called Love Needs You.

I never knew plants would grow without Hank Williams singing the blues in the background. (talking senior here)