For me, yesterday started similar to the day before. I went shopping, and evaluated how my right foot, and it's very sore toe felt. I did notice a useful improvement when I went to Aldi yesterday morning. It was by no means comfortable, but certainly less uncomfortable than 24 hours earlier. It still seemed like a good idea to rest my feet for a bit after that shopping trip, and I spent an hour or so reading, but gradually I felt the urge to do something more useful.

  The first useful thing was to wash a couple of t-shirts and underwear. I do seem to be doing this in smaller batches than I used to. It's probably because it gives me something to do, and is sort of satisfying. I hung that washing on the line outside, and expected it to dry quite fast. It didn't. The air was so humid that after 4 hours it was still almost as wet as when I hung it up. I later brought it indoors, and it seemed to dry fairly fast on the clothes horse with a fan blowing on it.

  The big project, if I may suggest such a grand idea, was to do some gardening. In fact I don't think I spent much more than half an hour in the gardening, although it could have been more - work distracts from time keeping. In fact I wonder if it was really an hour or more. What I do know is that I was sweating profusely as I worked. I can only attribute that to the humidity (the same that stopped my washing drying). High blood glucose can cause sweating too, as I know all too well, but my blood glucose level is not that bad.
  Compared to what an 18th century navvie might do in 2 seconds flat when digging a railway or canal navigation, my hole in the ground seemed like hard work to me. It doesn't look it in this picture, but it is 9 or 10 inches deep. My aim was to dig down to find deeper soil that may have less weed seeds in it. I also wanted to get below the old layers of cat litter. Three types of cat litter were dumped on what was completely overgrown lawn area. One type was wood chips, and they disappeared after a few years. The grey, clay based litter has been sort of absorbed into the mud to form a very sticky form of mud. The third type of litter was mysterious red grit. I have no idea what it was, and still is, because it remains virtually unchanged to this day. There were pockets of the stuff 6 inches down.

  What I should do is to dig over the entire area to bring deeper soil to the surface, and bury the red grit, but that what would be too much hard work...although I guess I could do it a little at a time. As I said, my objective yesterday was to try and find soil that was deep enough not to have too many seeds in it. I wanted it to fill up two plant pots that I hope I will be growing some chilli plants in. In the end I used some soil scooped from elsewhere for the top layer of soil in the pots. I just hope I can recognise, and remove any weeds that start to grow before the chilli plants start to grow - if they do !
  My other bit of excavation was to roughly level off this area, and reduce the height a bit, before selecting old bricks to support 4 different pots - so far. The two wooden pots (can they be called pots, or are they boxes ?) contain only soil that I hope I managed to sterilise in my microwave oven. I have seeded them with cornflower seeds. If they grow they should add a bit of colour to the garden. The two round pots have chilli seeds in them. Now the waiting begins ! Incidently, the line of bricks that can be seen, albeit a bit indistinctly, in front of the pots, were a long buried feature to mark a flower bed that must have been set up by the previous owner of my house.
  Here's a long view down the garden that puts some of this in perspective. The hole I dug would be just off the bottom of the picture. The plant pots are at the end. Sooner or later (maybe today) I will sprinkle some seeds in the earth behind those pots. The middle of the lawn looks green, but very ragged. It is about 40% weeds, 40% grass, and 20% bare patches. I was originally going to get the shears out yesterday and cut the weeds and grass down to a couple of inches. My theory is that it would help to kill off some of the weeds, and more clearly show where I need to do something to the soil, like turning it over, and sowing more grass seed. It is not the conventional way of growing a lawn, but maybe next year I will have got the garden into a state where I can really try and grow the garden I hope to.

  I had quite a selection of food yesterday, but apart from one nectarine, and one apple, it was generally stuff that should keep my blood glucose down. I didn't think it would be useful for weight loss though. I am sure the olives I ate are very high in calories, as were the marinated tomatoes. I had quite a lot of the latter. Half were from a sort of plastic platter of nibbles - olives, marinated tomatoes, and cubes of cheese. The other half, from their own pot, I had with an otherwise very healthy dinner of grilled cod with a mix of watercress, spinach, and (I think) rocket.

  I ate dinner a lot later than usual because I had a typically long phone call with Sue - although it was not a stupidly long call - a mere two hours this time ! I think it was getting on for 8pm before I had dinner. Not much more than an hour after dinner I was in bed. As usual I read for a while, but I am pretty sure I was asleep before 10pm. I slept well, but in two halves with what felt like a long gap between them.

  This morning I don't feel that good, although I can't point to any individual reason why that should be so. My health indicators say I should be feeling good. My blood glucose had dropped a bit more from the bad peak some days ago. This morning it was 7.4mmol/l, and that is below my rolling average for this month. My weight seems to have dropped a tiny bit too, but still not as low as when very dehydrated after a long walk. My temperature is 36.1° C - which is well below fever level, and my blood pressure is 119/70 - also a very good figure. My blood oxygen saturation is 99% - which is above average for anyone !

  One definite negative thing is the sore toe on my sore foot. It is definitely getting better, but it could be weeks and week before completely healed. Provided I pad it with sticking plaster - not an easy thing to do to a toe - it is not too bad. I may go for a walk later. I think I'll just head towards Ladywell through my local park, and see how I feel. I will walk as much, or as little as feels OK. Other than that, and assuming I don't end up walking a lot further than I think I can, I will probably do some more gardening today. I will probably scatter some seeds in the earth behind the plant pots, and maybe I might get the shears out and trim the "lawn".....maybe !