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although i probably deserved to sleep a bit more for my late work last night, i still woke up at my usual time. fortunately there were no fires to put out and after calling the client, i compiled a few new version of the program and uploaded them onto the server for the client.

i had nothing to eat in the house other than oatmeal. with the temperature in the 50's i debated whether to set out my plants for hardening, but put them in the backyard anyway (tough love), figuring i'd be back to bring them inside before it got cold again tonight.

another item on my todo list was to finally pay my taxes. with the flood-assisted tax deadline extension about to end tomorrow, i figured there was no point in avoiding the inevitable. i packed all my forms into manila envelopes and would need to go to the post office later to get the correct postage.

i left for belmont, where i had some rice porridge for lunch. afterwards i went to the town post office. having grown up in belmont, i have a list of favorite streets. one such street is mrytle, perpendicular off of concord avenue across from the high school athletics field. it's a steep road, flanked by the tallest oak trees in town which form a canopy high above. it's probably not a fun street to live on (treacherous icy winters, tedious walks uphill) but it is pretty.

i did a couple of gardening things today. first, my father and i put up a fencing so the snap peas will have something to climb onto. even though the size was specified as 15ft x 5ft, due to the stretchy nature of the string netting we were able to pull it out even bigger. although i may have failed on the lettuce front, i will definitely harvest some snap peas this season. after the peas are done, the trellis will be used by a combination of cypress vines (red), moon flowers (white), and morning glories (blue) - for a most patriotic display of floral colors.

next i dug up some more bamboo rhizomes and snipped them off. the underground roots are actually pretty shallow and very easy to unearth. using a spade to uproot a segment, i can usually just use my hands to pull up the rest, like revealing strands of buried bamboo wires. i must've excavated more than 25ft worth of lateral shoots (with plenty more to go on the other side of the bamboo groves, not to mention neighboring yards which i can't even get to). my father cut them into smaller pieces and we covered them up with wet peat moss. we might give them away to friends, or sell them on craig's list if anyone might be interested (although why anyone would want this evil plant in their backyard is beyond me). i asked my father where he originally got the bamboos from, and he said from a neighbor (this neighbor now has a bamboo forest instead of a lawn).

finally, i packed a bunch of heavy duty ziploc bags with wet peat moss and perlite and threw in the peony seeds. according to the photos attached to the original seed packets, we're supposed to have 7 different varieties. most of them are red to pink, with one white and one green. whether this is true or not i guess we'll find out in 2-3 years when the plants flower, provided they'll even germinate. for the time being these seeds will live in a warm spot above the fridge to induce them to sprout (supposedly in 3 months time, sometime in august).

didn't hear much from the client the rest of the day. i got a few text edits which i quickly fixed and sent him the updated xml files. i think for the most part this project is over (time to invoice).

it's getting lighter and lighter every time i bicycled back to cambridge. i didn't even need to turn on any of my lights today when i went home although it did get a little dusky when i finally made it back. first thing i did was to move all my backyard plants back inside the house. supposedly there's a freeze warning tonight in massachusetts. it probably won't affect cambridge and the city but better safe than sorry.