it's official: my sunflower plants have now surpassed me in height. elsewhere in my garden, i've been finding signs of squirrel activities within the past few weeks. they're either digging around looking for food or possibly burying things for winter storage. they stay away from my parents for the most part, i haven't had any of my vegetables stolen my animals. at the far end of the community garden is a plot owned by somebody who's just growing tomatoes using black plastic mulch. i've seen the person just one time, when he was preparing his plot back during spring, but i haven't seen him since. although he has a lot of tomatoes, they all look sick and yellow (the "bad tomatoes") from lack of proper watering and pruning.

today i saw the monster tomato. it belongs to somebody else and when i first spotted it, i actually thought it was 5 tomatoes growing in close proximity to one another. further inspection revealed that it was in fact a single large tomato. these are what one might called "heirloom" varieties, which is just a polite way of saying freakishly mutated plant.

honeybees are not native bee species and most honeybees are domesticated (although occasionally a colony will turn feral and built a hive in a tree). that means when you see honeybees visiting your garden, most likely they "belong" to somebody, and the nectar that the bees bring back to the colony will end up becoming honey for some lucky beekeeper. in essence, somebody is freeloading off of my flowers! true, their honeybees do provide a valuable service (pollination) but somehow i feel entitled to a share of whatever honey gets made courtesy of my garden. i feel bad for the honeybees though, who have no say in the matter and probably don't even know that their food source will be taken away from them soon.

i spent most of the day holed up in my bedroom watching movies (spiderman 3, pretty persuasion, sympathy for lady vengeance). for lunch i made an omelette (eggs, milk, basil, scallions, cheese, capers), for dinner i had a salmon steak. i watched the red sox game: at first it looked like they'd win, then it looked like they'd lose, but they made a valiant effort to come back with some runs but unfortunately fell short. good news: yankees lost as well, so they're still 5 games back.