the information i could find online about the dominican day parade happening today in boston were apparently wrong. the parade was supposed to start from roxbury community college. i cut across fenway and the museum of fine arts onto columbus avenue and didn't see anything. you figured something like a dominican parade would be noisy and gregarious, but the area was a ghost town.

up cedar street, i ended up at centre street and parked by john eliot square. i walked down king street, passing an under-construction mosque, and proceeded to investigate the area on foot, looking for signs of the parade. making a circle around the college campus, i saw a car decked out in dominican flags heading south on columbus avenue. i quickly returned to my bike and followed the same direction.

at the intersection of centre street (jamaica plain) and columbus avenue, at the jackson square T station, i saw some barricades and some cops and asked about the parade route. apparently roxbury community college had nothing to do with it: the route starts in JP down centre street, then heads south on columbus avenue. i headed up centre street where people drapped in dominican flags were already lining up on the shady side of the street for the parade to start. i parked the bike on sunnyside street and walked back down to jackson square.

the parade itself was actually pretty small, less than a hour for the entire procession to pass through. i think i was expecting to see something more like the carnival parades at the end of the month, so this seemed pretty subdued in comparison. there weren't even any dancing girls clad in feathers and the closest thing i got was a man wearing a festive drag outfit.

when the street sweepers came that was my cue to hit the road. i followed centre street all the way to JP center and took the riverway to get back home to cambridge.

it's been a few days since i visited the garden so i took the opportunity to do some watering. joel (mister call-me-saturday-morning) was there, holding a beet he'd plucked from his own garden. i noticed most of my cucumbers and morning glory plants looked like they were severely wilting. upon further examination i discovered that someone had actually cut them - essentially killing them. this can only be the work of my neighbors who live next to my community garden plot. i'm any particularly mad because my cucumbers weren't producing flowers anyway, but it was still a really lousy thing to do, and if there's any sort of karmic justice in the world, hopefully they'll receive it soon.

a single large red tomato was ready for the picking, with 2 more that need a few more days before they're fully ripened. with my 3 tomato plants i think i can probably get a yield of 20 tomatoes per plant for a total of 60 tomatoes. that's ironic because i'm actually not a big fan of tomatoes, but at least i'll have fresh ingredients to go on an italian cooking rampage towards the end of the month. my tomatillo plant seems to be producing a lot of flowers but no fruits, other than the one that fell off last week. i'm beginning to think they don't self-pollinate which would explain a lot. so now that i no longer have a cucumber plant, looks like i just have tomatoes, basil, and some scallions left growing in my garden. plus the sunflowers, which are just for show and not really for eating.

i left for my parents' place after 5pm, with the outcome of the red sox game sill undecided, but since gagne allowed the runs to tie the game back up for the orioles, i had a feeling we'd lose this game as well.

nobody's been really watering my parents' garden. the whole backyard needs some serious landscaping (pruning, weeding, mowing, planting), but that's a different problem entirely. the upside-down tomato plant was completely wilted and that was the first one i watered. the basils were all dried up, their leavings puckering upwards. the habaneros seem to be okay though, at least the one i didn't prune accidently when it was still a seedling. although still short, it seems taller than my own habaneros, but without any flowers yet. the tomatoes seem spindly although there are green tomatoes (they appear about 2 weeks behind my own tomatoes). if we have a long growing season, these 3 plants might yield about 10 tomatoes each if we're lucky. surprisingly, the cucumbers seem to be doing the best despite the lack of watering: i managed to cut off about half a dozen large cucumbers and there seem to be plenty more flowers left, so hopefully there will be more cucumbers.

my sister was cooking dinner for everyone again, this time inviting my aunt lili and uncle matthew, as well my other aunt and grandmother. my sister was bragging about how she prepared this multi-course meal just a few hours ago (4pm) and was basking in the accolade over her cooking skills.