Re-use

In the relatively small part of the day when I was active, I started a little hobby project to re-use the large plywood box in which a jeroboam of champagne arrived (a birthday present from L) on the balcony. Here’s part of it - the lid, which has been stained, and I’ve also drilled some holes in it so that I can, when it eventually stops raining, attach it to the balcony with some wire. I’m hoping it will weather nicely.

The other larger part is going to become a herb trough. I’ve stained the outside, having removed some sticky labels and some internal padding, and drilled some drainage holes in the bottom, and now I’m waiting for a few herbs to arrive from Crocus, which I will plant out. I think I should just about have enough compost for this. I may want to bring it inside during winter, in which case I need to find a plastic water tray to put it on. Going on the crocus website involved not just buying some plants, but also a reduced plant stand that looked rather good.

As I related in yesterday’s blip, which I only got round to posting this morning, I had a mishap during the night which set my ankle/calf off again. The pain seems to have moved away from the Achilles as such, into the calf muscle proper, which keeps going into spasm if it gets in any way put under unexpected pressure. In response to comments on that blip, I was saying that things had got better during the day, but I spoke too soon. I thought about doing a gentle 20 minute spin on the bike, but just preparing to get on the bike and clip in put pressure on the muscle and it started playing up again big time. So I’ve had a very inactive day, with no walking, no spinning, and just a bit of fiddling on the balcony. And I think this will be the case for a few days, so I must adjust my food (and booze) intake accordingly. I also feel extremely tired, which may partly be the pain, and partly be the feeling of being under work pressure. It may also be because I’m a bit fed up with the injury, just when it was starting to feel much better. Clearly it was not.

So when I've been inactive, for most of the day, I did some catch up work, read my LRB, and now I'm about to read a novel.

Anyway, here are some soaking wet flowers and the new bit of “balcony art”.