a dose of exercise

I saw my Pilates teacher this morning.  I was curious about side leg raises, after reading in some newspaper article about the exercise habits of shapely and famous people, or more particularly Helen Mirren, but my teacher had to explain to me that the reason why I could raise my leg sideways as far as I could was because I was bending at the waist.  Then she showed me how to do it properly, and drew diagrams of little stick figures on a piece of paper to jog my memory when I tried it at home.

She had got a new wobble board, a contraption about the size of a tea tray, resting on a curved base about the size of a pasta dish, and capable of tipping in any direction when stood on, as compared to the old wobble board which would only tip in one plane at a time, either backwards and forwards or side to side, depending on which way round you stood on it.  All I was required to do in my first session with the new wobble board was stand on it.  It takes more brain power than the old one, in that it could go any way, whereas with the old one there were things you simply knew it wasn't going to do.  Once I have mastered standing still I'm sure there'll be variations to follow. With the old one she used to ask me to stand on one leg, but I don't think that's conceptually possible with the new design.  They are deceptively simple bits of equipment, and certainly make you more aware of all the micro-corrections your body is carrying out every moment you are standing up, as well as your posture.  Mine is still not great, but better than when I started.

After lunch I settled down to weed the border by the Buddha statue, and more prosaically the septic tank.  The Cyclamen coum have started flowering, though August seems very early, and I would like them to do so from a clean sweep of earth perhaps topped off with freshly applied mulch, rather than peering out from a litter of twigs and Herb Robert seedlings, backed by a drift of an exceptionally dull woodland flower whose name I don't know.  Its leaves are shaped like a geum, its flowers small, yellow and unremarkable, and it seeds itself with great enthusiasm over the shady borders, and into a shaded bit of gravel near the oil tank.

The ground was so hard that I might as well have gone equipped with a chisel as a trowel. Fortunately the nameless geum-like things grew from single stems connected to fairly compact roots, and it was possible to chip out each stem in turn and be fairly sure it wouldn't be coming back.  If I'd been dealing with anything with a running root system I'd have had to give up until I'd run the hose on the bed for an hour or two to loosen the soil.  It is forecast to rain heavily tomorrow, and the garden is so dry, I hope the forecasters are right.  Besides which, various inside jobs are becoming pressing, like cleaning the bathroom, and a wet day would remove temptation and leave me with no excuse not to do them.