The good thing about the cloud, that might have produced a a splash of rain late yesterday night, but didn't appear to,  was that it kept a bit of the warmth in, and this morning was cool rather than cold. By 9.30am it was just mild enough to go shopping without a coat - about 10° C. Unfortunately the latest revision to the forecast shows less sunshine than predicted earlier this morning. 1 and 2pm may only feature sunny spells, and then the sun goes in, and doesn't come out again until 5pm. There could be full sunshine again at 6pm until sunset. Also unfortunately is that the maximum temperature is only expected to be 15° C, although that is pretty good. Tomorrow's high is expected to be only 12° C, but I guess that is still good compared to earlier in the month. The afternoon could feature some heavy cloud.

    Yesterday was a very productive day (for me). In the morning I did my weekly shopping in Aldi, and then after a good rest I washed a couple of t-shirts and some underwear. After that the real blood sweat and tears started. I did some gardening for the first time this year. My original idea was to cut the lawn with the strimmer, but the middle of it needs a lot of attention with spade and rake because of all the soil, and stones, kicked over it where the vixen, and probaby her cubs too, have been cleaning out their tunnels under next doors garden.
  What I started on was the very back of the garden where the new fence was erected. I had been leaving that until the fence was up. (I first heard it was going to happen as much as a month ago). After it was all churned up it seemed like a good time to try and get as much rubble out of it as possible, and also to finally get rid of the two stumps of old trees. Those trees had been killed by ivy, and had been rotting for some time, but were still quite well anchored deep in the ground. The biggest stump resisted all my efforts, but I was able to chip a lot of rotten wood off it using my spade.

  There is an area about a yard wide on each side of the picture above that I haven't really touched, but the middle is almost ready for planting. I managed to find most of the old brick boundary to what must have been a flower bed before I moved in. My next job, before planting some flowers and tomatoes here will be to build a low brick wall. It will only be two bricks high, and won't use any cement, but it should hopefully hold in the earth that will probably end up 3 or 4 inches higher than the lawn.
  I have a big selection of bricks (and other rubble) to choose from to make my wall. All the bricks in this picture, including many hidden by weeds, all came out of the ground during my clearing operations. It is my belief that many of them were just dumped in the garden by the builders who renovated/modernised my house before I bought it in October 1983.
  Digging up bricks, and tree stumps, as well as shovelling dirt from here to there was hard work, and I was getting quite hot in the bright sunshine. I even worked topless ! It was nice getting the sun on my body even if it wasn't a pleasant sight for any nosy neighbours. What was really taxing was cutting the remains of the branch sticking out to the left of the big tree stump. I spent a fair time sawing, and then had to give up because it was just too much for me. After resting for around an hour I took a deep breath, and got back to it.
  That branch was possibly over 6" thick where I finally managed to saw it off. At the end of it my right arm muscles were aching, and so was my chest. The chest pain was very high up, and I think it was some muscles that I probably rarely use - except maybe to hold my chest together after I broke something(s) while I was supposed to be healing after my operation in 2013. A couple of Ibuprofen tablets seemed very effective at curing that pain totally.
  In between all the other stuff I found the time and energy to do some more intensive weeding of the potato patch. There are currently 4 potato plants sprouting at the moment, and I am expecting to see more soon. As well as weeding this area I got out the hose pipe and gave it a good watering. The soil was remarkably dry, but I guess that is no surprise because we haven't had any rain now for a good few weeks. The hose was also good for jet washing the soil off the old bricks that formed the edge of the bed at the back of the garden.

  There was one final thing I did in the garden yesterday, and that was to string the clothes line to to one of the new fence posts at the bottom of the garden. I will, once again, be able to dry stuff in fresh air and sunshine again now. After that I had a well earned rest. It wasn't long before dinner time loomed. Before eating I checked my blood glucose level. It had been 8.8mmol/l in the morning. I hadn't fasted during the day, and I even had some breakfast of grilled fish in batter, but that hard work, and maybe not eating much else, had reduced my blood glucose down to 7.3mmol/l - which was good !

  My dinner was casseroled lean diced beef, with a bell pepper and bean sprouts. I usually enjoy that meal, or some similar variants, but I found it almost bland...or maybe not "bland" but somehow insubstantial. It may have been that all the days hard work made me think it would be nice to have something more substantial. I did end up having a chunk of cheese later, but nothing else....or at least I don't think I had anything else.

  I expected to sleep like a log last night, but I initially couldn't seem to fall asleep. I was just on the point of falling asleep when I heard a noise. I was sure it was a mouse, although a good look around in daylight this morning suggests it was nothing more than a bit of paper falling off the back of my computer desk where I had been moving stuff around earlier to check what was on a few CDR disks.  That noise in the night still disturbed me enough to keep me awake until midnight (or was it 11pm ?).

  This morning there was double good news. My blood glucose was only 7.6mmol/l - just a fraction over my target. Maybe that was almost predictable considering some of the effort I have put into it recently. What was a whole lot less predictable was that I seemed to suffer no obvious ill effects from my hard work yesterday. My back didn't hurt, and that was quite a surprise after all the bending over I was doing. My right arm was not obviously sore after all that sawing, although I did detect a small effect when lifting a few things.

  I have had a slightly busy morning. Earlier on I had a shower and washed my hair. When my hair was dry I went shopping in the Poundshop. It meant putting on a face mask which annoyed me, but I suppose it annoyed me less than finding they didn't have what I wanted. I have decided that the remaining big tree stump in the garden will become the support for a short pole with a bird feeding table on it. I was hoping to get some bird feeding stuff from Poundland. I am sure they had a selection of possible things last year, before lockdown, but apparently not this year, I still seemed to spend £23 in there buying loads of stuff - often two of some things so I don't have to go there again for some time.

  The latest revision to the weather forecast seems to have made up my mind about what I will be doing this afternoon. The gap in the sunshine/sunny spells this afternoon has reduced my desire to go for a walk. I had been imagining I might even wear my shorts if it was going to be very sunny. As it stands I still have some more laundry soaking away as I type. I want to get that hanging on the washing line to dry as early as possible. I also want to make my bird table, and do some other gardening stuff. Quite what I actually do will be explained tomorrow.