i debated whether to attend somerville open studios but decided against it after browsing their list of artists and not seeing anything particularly interesting personally.

my neighbor doug's condo is finally on the market after he unexpectedly passed away early last year. i saw the "for sale" sign last week and went to the open house today out of curiosity. for some reason i thought his place was much larger but was in fact only 774 square feet (about the same size as my place). bruce and i did some demolition work back in 2003, but i hadn't seen the place since then. during the renovation his converted the layout to a single bedroom. asking price: $389k.

i biked down to the community garden to water my tomatoes and met some gardeners for the first time. there was a woman standing in the small plot behind the mulberry tree next to my own plot. she introduced herself as christie, a newbie gardener. she knew mea who had the plot previously, and mea warned her about the mulberries. i then talked with mary o'brien, who has one of the corner plots. when i told her about my tomatoes, she told me it was still early, but i knew the risks. finally i was introduced to sharon, who has a plot against the chain link fence at the back end of the garden. when i tried to water my plants though, no water came out. after checking a few other faucets i discovered this was true everywhere. i figured i'd come back tomorrow and try again.

i left the community garden and made my way to harvard square. i had my good earth tea in my contigo travel mug which made me seem less out of place as i meandered through the crowd at the annual may fair. the smells of street food was delicious, even more so because i didn't have any breakfast yet. i made my way to the chalk artists, which is my favorite part of may fair.

coinciding with may fair was the get growing festival happening on palmer street (that cobblestoned pathway between the two harvard coop stores), with tables set up for people to learn about composting, beekeeping, rain barrels, raising chickens, urban fruit, hydroponics, growing mushrooms - pretty much everything i like. i was only planning on briefly checking out the may fair but i ended up staying for almost an hour talking with the various get growing folks.

i saw some pretty chickens and even got a chance to pet one of the hens (because of the all that feather, they're very soft). while at the urban fruit table, i bumped into sharon whom i saw earlier at the garden. i talked with a girl named allison who had an idea for rooftop gardening. during our chat, i realized she was the same girl who was embroiled in a big urban chicken case a few years ago, when one of her cambridgeport neighbors made a complaint. unlike nearby suburbs (belmont, arlington), cambridge doesn't allow urban chickens. allison had 3 wyandotte hens and a 2 cayuga ducks which she eventually had to give away. sadly her birds died soon afterwards.

back at home, i gathered up my things and upgraded my ride to the motorcycle as i made my to belmont. i'd called my mother 2 hours ago saying i was coming right over. it was almost 3:00 and i didn't have any food yet; fortunately there was still some leftover bacon in the kitchen.

i organized my plants: vegetables and herbs in the various raised beds while flowers would be planted in the recently-cleared southeastern corner garden. i chopped down the thorn bush on the eastern side of the yard (home of my first shade garden featuring hostas and ferns) but the branches were stuck on the fence that the whole bush itself was still hovering off the ground despite being "decapitated." i slowly disassembled the bush branch by branch using a bypass pruner, made trickier by the many thorns.

when my father came home sometime after 5:00, we went to work planting uprooted chinese chives in the southwestern garden. we ended up with way more chive roots than we could plant; i'll take those to the mid-cambridge plant swap next saturday and see if i can get something good. even if i don't, i'd be happy just giving away those chinese chives for free to anybody who wants them.

my sister's friend came by again right before dinner to take hailey out for another walk. instead of being afraid, hailey was happy this time, and eagerly left the house.

i quickly motorcycled home so i could catch the second half of the hawks-celtics game. despite a 37 point celtics lead at one point, it's well known in the NBA that boston is a team that will let you back into the game. sure enough, atlanta put on a run and got as close as 22 points before the celtics wrestled back control of the game to win and lead the series 3-1. game 5 is tuesday night in atlanta.

oh. my. god. rory gilmore is on mad men! can this show be any better? they hire all my favorite actresses (alison brie, madchen amick) and now they've got alexis bledel, whoring it up no less as a cliché sexually-dissatisfied suburban housewife.

why do i keep on thinking megan draper is going to die this season? first there was that hojo episode that flirted with the idea that something awful might've happened to her. then in this episode, after megan goes down the elevator, don punches the next one and all we see an empty elevator shaft. what's going on? all i know is i'm really scared for her. please don't die megan!