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i couldn't resist going to belmont and checking up on the squash status. i grabbed my camera and left via motorcycle after some cereal for breakfast/lunch.

all the flower buds from yesterday had bloomed but they were already wilted from the midday sun. i was surprised but glad to see that there weren't any SVB eggs. maybe a fellow squash growing neighbor had caught the adult. maybe it just overlook our garden. i did decide to cut off all the spent blossoms, maybe try some fried squash flowers. while snipping off one of the flowers, i did find a single SVB egg on a stem. i don't think it was laid today, probably just one we missed from sunday. i really should go ahead and spray the stems with a Bt solution as a precaution, before any missed eggs hatch.

there is a 3rd zucchini on the large squash plant. its flower has yet to bloom, so the bud looks like a turban on the zucchini. we have a lot of sunflowers this year; i didn't realize they would all germinate when i planted them in the spring. there are actually so many that it's eclipsing the cocozelle squashes and the pickling cucumbers growing below. i'm hoping the sunflowers will bloom within in the next week or two and we can cut them down to allow more sun to pass through. finally, one of the cypress vines has finally bloomed. they're so delicate and always seem to be overshadowed by distant cousins morning glories and moonflowers. the moonflowers have yet to bloom. i don't think we'll see any until august.

the schwinn 7-speed was missing so i knew my father had rode it to work. in its place was the raleigh 3-speed, which my father must've fixed, so i took it out for a test ride.

i've never rode a raleigh 3-speed before, at least not one that was working. this was my first experience with a hub gear. they're better than levers, but not as good as indexed gears. it engaged the 3 different speeds well enough, but sometimes it'd get stuck on a gear, or jump from one speed to another. for everyday riding it's not a problem, but i'd probably want something with a little more accuracy when it comes to shifting. riding-position-wise, it felt very good, upright and easy to handle with the north road handlebars. we have so many bikes now that we could probably take relatives out on bike tours when they come to visit us.

this 1973 raleigh is in very good condition. with a little more polish, it could be close to mint. compared to the 1975 raleigh 3-speed i have in my basement, this one has a lot more original raleigh parts. these parts are also better, more attention to detail. maybe by 1975 raleigh was cutting corners and trying to reduce cost by using inferior components.

i returned to cambridge afterwards, but not before bringing back the stack of stuck-together family photos. i figured i could on them from home. there's actually a lot more than i realized, around 4-5 dozen photos all stuck together. i managed to pry off a few more today (a bunch from an april 1986 family trip to niagara falls), but i did ruin another photo, an old one of my mother and my two aunts. the photo basically started disintegrating the moment i soaked it in water. it was pretty traumatic watching the image just disappear. i vowed to scan any future photos before i'd soak them in water again.

in the mid-afternoon i made a quick trip to the cafe when i saw my godmother on the internet webcam. she called me a few nights ago about doing some container gardening. last night i picked up an unwanted wooden planter box from a neighbor. it as more than 4 feet long, so was a slight challenge to transport. i strapped it onto the back of my motorcycle with some bungie netting and rode off to the cafe, making sure i had good clearance on either side.

later i went on a grocery run. i wanted to make a spinach ricotta pie for dinner. i basically followed the same recipe from the last time i made it. i started cooking around 7:00. bram came home shortly afterwards and saw me busy in the kitchen. when i told him what i was making, he pulled out from his backpack his own dinner: a frozen feta spinach pie! somehow his seemed more delicious. my own pie was pretty good, but it definitely needs some bacon, a note i made last time but failed to listen.