Aconite

 

May 2, 2022

Yesterday’s gentle murk continues. I hadn’t planned gardening, but while it was yet cool morning I found myself outside, and at the end of it I’d finished all planned planting for the year. Much digging, clearing, weeding. Put into the ground sunflowers and aconite, the aconite in a barrel in the full shade recommended. A few seeds are left over, for which I will find a patch of likely ground somewhere in the world, that they may work out their destinies, but I am finished here. Sat in the garden afterward in such a soporific state it’s a miracle I moved at all. 

Gout reduced to a shadow. Because it never interfered with my life or work, or I was never distraught when deprived of it, I probably underestimated my alcohol intake. Only evenings, between last duty and sleep, but the bottles could empty fast. I find no particular gout risk factor in my life (being functionally a vegetarian right now) but that, so the first two days of May, at least, are teetotal days. I enjoy alcohol, enjoy the taste of the drinks and the way it makes me feel, but I think similar pleasure can be extracted with less volume. I did wake today unusually refreshed. I napped, during which I had a long dream that involved water and gardening and meeting a woman who lives on Tan Lane, where I lived in Exeter.