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i went down to the community garden around noontime with 2 boxes of select transplants. i was there until 2:00, transferring my seedlings into the ground. i started planting all my stuff on the exact same day last year. although i started all sorts of seedlings last year, for whatever reason i didn't have great luck transferring them to the garden. when i did relocate them, many were stunted snd sickly, probably because i started them indoors too early. this year i started late with my indoor seedlings, but i feel like i have much healthier plants.

by this time last year, the chinese lantern plant was already 6-12" tall. they're either slightly behind schedule this season or maybe its because i accidently dug through them when i forgot they were there. these perennials grow via underground stems, not tubers. i maybe to relocate them to my parents' place at the end of the season.

there's definitely a few seedlings in my lettuce plot. i think they might be arugula but i can't be sure until they get a little bigger. i'm leaving them there to see how long they'll grow. i may be able to get an arugula leaf or two for a paltry salad.

i set my 3 tomatillo plants in the back of the garden. they tend to grow fairly big, and i don't want them blocking the sunlight for the other plants. i have them growing in front of the garden last season and they basically took over. i don't know why i keep on growing them, i've never used them for any of my cooking and the tomatillo fruits themselves are never very big (the biggest one i had was about the size of a golf ball, and that was a rare giant amongst tiny tomatillo fruits usually the size of gumballs).

i set my 2 nasturtiums in the back as well. they don't seem to require a lot of sun, and do fine in partial shade. i may go out and buy some more seeds (the ones i'm growing now are 2nd generation) and grow some in my shady backyard.

the snap pea plants are a thing of beauty, climbing their tomato cages. i think i have the biggest pea plants compared to the other gardeners. i'm still curious as to how many pods i can expect to get from each plant (5 total). peas are the only new thing i'm growing in the garden this year.

i planted my 2 cucumber seedlings so they'll share cages with the pea plants. i figured by the time the cucumbers really start to grow, the pea plants will be done producing, so the cucumbers can just take over the tomato cages. i'll probably grow a few more cucumbers from seeds in the 3 other remaining pea plant tomato cages.

my father told me it's easier to grow cilantro by just broadcasting their seeds directly into the soil. that's probably what i'll do in the future, because when i grow them in containers, they're always very thin and weak. i sort of plugged my 3 cilantros and 2 parleys wherever i saw a sunny opening in the garden between anchor plants.

tomatoes get the best location, out in the full sun. i only planted 3, but i have 6 more seedlings at home, which i will share between my great uncle and my parents.

basils (4) were also planted haphazardly like the cilantro and parsley, but maybe in slightly better spots with more sun. basil is something i can always grow more of because you can never have enough in your cooking.

i still need to buy some salsa pepper plants from pemberton and i'm still looking for a source of marsh grass mulch. i may head down to wilson farms in lexington tomorrow to see if i can get my hands on some (they definitely had them a month ago, at their ridiculously marked up price).

i didn't plan on staying out so long because my wide angle lens was due to arrive today and i didn't want to miss the UPS truck. fortunately when i got back home there was still no package on my doorstep. i noticed the owner of the chinese restaurant zoe walking around my street. i deduced that maybe parts of beacon street lost their power because he was nervously watching a utility company repairman doing some work with the powerlines. usually cambridge is the town that has unexplained blackouts, glad somerville experiences them too.

the $85 77mm slim circular polarizing filter arrived in the afternoon with the mail. the wide angle lens itself arrived around 5:00. i was kind of surprised to see how small the box was, but the lens itself isn't very big to begin with (even though it takes "big" pictures). i noticed it screwed onto my camera body kind of tight (must be some gunk with the camera), and i unscrewed it a few times to make sure i wasn't doing something wrong. when i took a few test photos, they didn't look very sharp when i magnified them inside the camera. did i get a defective lens? i started to wonder. but it was only after i downloaded the photos to my camera did i see they were just as sharp as the wide angle lens alex let me borrow last week. this lens is now the most expensive piece of photo equipment i own. i can't wait to take it out for a test drive; unfortunately it looks like rain for the next few days (rainy day photos might be a possibility though).

i woke up this morning just in time to catch the live announcement of sonia sotomayor as obama's supreme court nominee. i was surprised by how unsurprising it was, since sotomayor was already the heavily favored since she qualifies as both hispanic and female. for lunch and dinner i ate some barbecued memorial day leftovers from this past weekend (chicken legs and chinese sausages). in the evening i watched game 4 between the cavaliers and the magic. i can't believe the magic won again, now they're up 3-1. at least point i really don't care who wins anymore. i'm still rooting for the cavaliers, but if the magic take the series, at least the celtics were beaten by the conference champions, as ill-deserved as that may be.

late last night i managed to watch sunday night's episode of breaking bad. something happened in that episode that was absolutely heartbreaking and horrible at the same time. if you saw it you know what i'm talking about. why more people don't watch this show is beyond me; it's the best show on cable television right now. next sunday is the season finale, which means that all you lazy folks who can't watch television the normal way can finally order the whole season's worth of episodes on dvd.

dusty springfield - "stupido stupido"