i went to the library this morning to finally return a few books i've been renewing even though i've already read them but just too lazy to bring them back. checking out books gives me a kind of joy similar to when i buy something new. my morning errand run also involved going to foodmaster to buy some corn, but i figured i'd pick up cheaper corn at haymarket this weekend.

i motorcycled to belmont in the early afternoon with a mission to eradicate any squash vine borer (SVB) eggs. checking the base of the stems revealed nothing out of the ordinary. i did however find a bunch of small flat discs sprinkled on the upper squash leaves and stems. i thought SVB only laid eggs at the base? besides, these looked more like plants seeds than insect eggs. nevertheless, i removed all the ones i could find. later i'd discover that they were in fact SVB eggs. tomorrow i'm going to buy some Bt to spray on the plants.

fortunately SVB don't seem to affect cucumbers, not even weird korean varieties. but i'll probably spray Bt on the cucumber plants as well, just to be safe, since i saw the SVB hovering around here yesterday.

both the fancy gourds and the bottle gourds have begun to produce female flowers and their accompanying immature fruit forms. this gives us a sneak preview of what the final gourds will look like, at least shape-wise.

the hot pepper flowers blooming a few weeks ago are now actual immature hot peppers. i wonder if the plants will continue to produce peppers, because there doesn't seem to be a lot, maybe a few on each plants. i wonder what the secret is to growing bigger pepper plants. maybe a second summer planting?

the first day of july and the state of the garden seems to be in good shape. other than the SVB problem, there haven't been too many other issues. the 4 korean corn my father planted have all died for some reason. none of the sunflowers i planted in the corner have germinated, and of the second round of corn seeds i sowed, only a single one sprouted.

i had some of the shrimp & broccoli pasta my sister made after returning from the woods with hailey. i tried setting up a multiboot on my father's PC, but for some reason the two IDE drives had disappeared. i played around with the wires but couldn't figure out the problem. i finally fixed it by making one drive the master and the other a slave. it still doesn't make sense because both drives were working perfectly fine before as cable select.

with the 4th of july this weekend, a lot of neighboring towns are holding their own independence day celebration a few days earlier so it doesn't conflict with the big festivity in boston on sunday. cambridge counts the boston fireworks as its own since it shares the other shore of the charles river. nearby somerville however was holding their 4th of july fireworks today.

julie was supposed to come with me but bailed out at the last minute, some drama at the apple store over not being able to get a new iphone. i bicycled to trum field by 8:00 and mingled through the crowd of mostly townies, waiting for the sky to get dark so the fireworks could begin.

the fireworks were okay but i lost interest pretty quickly and started to head out before it even ended. no matter what, none of these local firework shows can compare to the big one in boston. but the one in boston is a whole different event, the kind where you have to get there hours early just to get a good spot. watching the fireworks, i also thought about what the original chinese fireworks would've looked like (probably nothing as spectacular as the ones we have today - were they even in color? or just white?).