this saturday consisted of some gardening and napping. my sister and i went ahead and planted her flower and herb seedlings: zinnias, lavenders, thyme, snapdragons and some other flower. they don't seem to be in good shape, all spindly with shallow roots, but hopefully a few of them will survive. we also sprinkled some more lavender and snapdragon seeds into the soil, and strategically buried a few zinnia seeds.
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out of the 3 varieties of lettuce, 'vivian' is doing the best, very straight and crisp leaves. 'iceberg' lettuce leaves are sort of yellow and they tend to droop. 'roman emperor' is second to 'vivian' but not all of it has sprouted. i would've guessed something was feeding on the 'roman emperor' except 'vivian' seems to be doing so well.
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radish tops are leafy enough that it'd be easy to mistake them for some sort of lettuce. but the red stem is a giveaway that there's something else going on (secret radish stash buried underground).
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there are signs of squirrels in the garden. in some of the mulch i could see they dug new holes. and the in leafy greens box, squirrels have trampled a few seedlings. once the plants get a little bigger they should be safe, but they're still vulnerable at this early stage. not sure how i can prevent this, short of using row covers as a barricade. maybe next season.
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in the afternoon i took a nap in my parents' bedroom. periodically the dog would jump on the bed and try to get my attention. i think she miscalculated and thought it was dinner time. came actual dinner time, my sister boiled some chinese dumplings and made an egg drop soup.
i hurried back to cambridge afterwards, trying to outrun the rainstorm that was heading our way, according to the doppler radar at least.
i chatted with franz who was pruning the holly bushes outside his house. later when i went out to cover my motorcycle, i chatted with dan, the retired firefighter. i caught him checking out my bike and we got to talking. he drives a dodge ram truck which he willingly admits gets terrible mileage, and was looking to get a touring motorcycle, partly for the better mileage, but partly because he "wanted a toy." then we i rode the bicycle to market basket, i ran into ed coming out of star market, on his way home to cook a big dinner and watch the hockey game.
i watched the first game between the tampa bay lightning and the boston bruins. i still think it's wrong that a city that never freezes would have a hockey team. tampa bay scored early in the game, 3 goals in under 2 minutes. it was a deficit boston couldn't make it, with the final being 5-2 and a final minute fight started by the bruins that benched 2 players during in a meaningless final power play to end the game.
never used to have spring allergies but i've been doing a lot of nose blowing and sneezing these days. i know it's not a cold because my throat itches. tired of suffering, i took a benadryl in the evening. now i'm super sleepy and might call it an early night.