The early morning predictions I made about yesterday were half right, and half wrong. I thought I might go for a walk in the afternoon, even if just a short one, and I also thought I might do a bit more gardening. It was the latter that turned out to be correct. I think I did three short sessions in the garden, and with hindsight that might have been the best way to do it.  If I had knackered myself the first time I would probably not have gone back for more. Doing it in three sessions, with rest breaks between, left me feeling OK to go out again - albeit for variable lengths of time. I think the shortest session was barely more than 10 minutes, and the longest maybe not much more than half an hour. These times are pure guesstimates because I was not timing myself.
  I did a little more weeding around my self-seeded potato plants - there is a lot more to do ! Other than that I did no more than water them. If I could have taken this picture from a much lower angle it would be more apparent that these plants have grown quite high, but look strong and sturdy. Last years potato plants were often quite limp and droopy - partly for lack of water, and also because they were too tightly packed together.
   My greatest achievement yesterday was to get the shears out, and give my "lawn" a haircut. I think I was quite surprised to see that under the weeds that infest large areas of the lawn was quite a lot of grass. The main reason to get the shears out was to decapitate those weeds before they got completely out of control. I was also surprised that there were less bald patches than I expected. The very worst I knew about anyway. It is the area where the grass runs out before it gets to the plant pots in the distance.

  I tried to break up that hard ground a bit, and sowed more grass seed before giving it a good watering with the hose. I must admit it did feel a bit odd to be using the hose because it was raining at the time ! The trouble was that it was just a very light sprinkling of rain, and barely wetting the ground.
  There is one area of lawn that is deliberately bare. This strip, just over a yard long, and next to the fence, is another attempt to grow some flowers along the border. I can't remember what seeds I planted there. They were big seeds, and I put a row of them in. There are two plants now growing that look different to any of the usual weeds.
  The two new plants, almost a yard apart, instead of every 6 to 8 inches if they are what I planted, looks a bit like a herb. This is a close up picture of one of those new plants. Hopefully a few might pop up soon. Even more hopefully is that at least these two might add a bit of colour and texture to my garden.
  This is one of the wooden plant "pots" that I filled with soil I hope I managed to sterilise in my microwave oven. If I did succeed in killing any weed seeds than these tiny sprouts are cornflowers. If I recall correctly, I seeded the identical pot next to this one a day later, and hopefully I'll see some activity in that today.

  One other little job I did was to weed, and break up the soil between the plant pots above and the back fence. I have scattered Californian Poppy seeds there. I have a feeling they will not grow as high as the cornflowers, and so be masked by them, but it will add a little colour. I just hope that the poppy seeds can grown faster than the weeds !

  It seems that gardening took up quite a lot of yesterday, but that can't be right...or can it ? I did spend a fair bit of time reading both from the internet, and a book, but did little else. It feels like there should have been ample opportunity to be bored, but I didn't seem to be. Cooking and eating took a very small amount of time. By lunchtime I wanted something nice, something tasty without anything that might affect my blood glucose. I ended up eating a plate of sausages and grilled/oven cooked mushrooms. It was not exactly low calorie, but it was nice, and very low carbohydrate.

  Dinner was much healthier, but not so good for my blood glucose level. It started out OK with grilled salmon and mange tout. In an ideal world that should have been enough, but maybe it was the fresh air in the garden making me feel hungry because I ended up having a dessert of two sweet nectarines. I washed it all down with a can of beer, and then a bottle of beer. I had another bottle chilling in the fridge, but by the time I could have opened it, it was getting late, and I kept it for another day.

  Last night's dinner was a bit later than usual (but not by that much). It seemed the next couple of hours flew by, and before I knew it I felt like going to bed. Once again I was in bed, and I might have even been asleep before it was dark outside - before 10pm. Last night was another annoying sleep of tow good halves with a period of insomnia between them. It is hard to say how long that period of insomnia was. It felt like ages, but it was possibly less than half an hour.

  This morning is yet another tale of good and bad. All the things I can measure look good. Even my blood glucose level is a little lower. It was 7.2mmol/l this morning - a drop of 0.2 per day for the last few days. I'll be happier when it goes under 7.0, but 7.2 is fine for now. I think my weight is probably about the same as yesterday. My weight is a sort of mystery because it doesn't seem to correspond to small changes in my body profile. As a for instance, I now need a belt for the pair of shorts I wear around the house, and when gardening. I am fairly sure it is a Pound Shop belt, and was once too small.

  When I tried it for size I noted that I had used it some time in the past, although I have no idea when, and the only wear was to the very first hole. I can imagine it might have bee a struggle to use that originally, and I soon put the belt aside when it no longer fitted. When I first used it again (a week ago, maybe a bit longer ?) I was easily able to do it up on the second hole. Yesterday I noted I was using the third hole, and that represents losing about an inch off my waistline - yet my gut doesn't really seem to be any smaller, and the scales agree with that. Maybe I now have more muscle, and that muscle is heavier than fat. The more muscle is probably true of my legs and in particular, my thighs.

  On the subject of muscles - my gardening did leave a legacy. I thought I would have back ache after bending over to cut the grass (and weeds) with shears, but to my surprise my back hasn't complained once. My arms have though, and so has my chest. I don't think I can think of a comparable action to using shears, and I guess I have been exercising a few forgotten muscles. If that is so I ought to shun mechanical aids, and trim the lawn with shears all the time. If it were not for the rain that will probably fall today, I could go for a closer, and more even cut of the lawn today.

  It will probably take ages yet before my skinned toe is fully healed, but it is far less tender today. There were time yesterday, when just wearing flip flops that I barely noticed it. I had intended to go for another trial walk yesterday. Today I think I definitely ought to do it. I had even thought of walking to Lewisham Park at lunchtime to see if I might bump into Angela. I have noticed a change in her temperament on a well known social media web site. I also noticed we have one thing in common - a strong dislike of face masks ! It seems more likely to be raining than sunshine at lunchtime, and so I don't think I'll bump into Angela today. It is possible I'll judge it too wet to even go for any walk,, but time will tell.