since i moved out most of my plants yesterday, it was time to consolidate my remaining indoor seedlings and reduce some grow lights. originally i thought i'd just use 2 shelves, but then realized there were so few plants i could put everything onto just one shelf instead. for that shelf, i used the 2 banks of new T8 lights i got this season, since they were the brightest. i think by next week i will completely shut down my grow closet for the season as all these remaining plants can be moved outside (or at the very least to my parents' sunroom, where they can take advantage of the ample natural sunlight).

i turned off my heat for the season. i wasn't quite sure how to go about doing it now that i had a nest thermostat. in years past, i would go down to the basement and shut down the furnace manually, blowing out the pilot light, turning off the gas line, and switching off the electricity. with the new furnace and the new nest, all i had to do was to turn heating to off from the thermostat. i could cut the power, but then the thermostat wouldn't work anymore. as of now, the thermostat doesn't do anything either, but at least it can still read the room temperature (even though i do have other digital indoor thermometers).

before i headed out to belmont, i went to star market to pick up some grapes and go over to my community garden plot to water the plants.

it was a hot day with temperature in the 80's, maybe a little bit too hot, but thankfully it was a dry heat. after i finished watering, i went to the other side of the garden where i saw sharon relaxing on a bench underneath the shade of tall maple trees. we chatted a while (i told her about my year spent in china), i didn't leave until after 3:30.

my father and i were out in the backyard digging out bamboo rhizomes and cutting down stalks. i kept telling him we should kill off all the bamboos, i feel like maybe he's still reluctant to do it. later we chopped up the stalks into 8 ft. long segments, for possible future projects.

we had rice noodles for dinner. i know how to make it myself, but for some reason when my mother makes it, it seems to taste better. we had grapes for dessert, and looked at some more taiwanese photos from my mother's camera. i asked them about the most delicious thing they ate in taiwan (it was some seafood restaurant in jingmei where you had to make a reservation). we also admired photos of passion fruit flowers they took on the hill of my grandmother's grave.

after dinner, i biked back to cambridge. it was so warm outside (76 degrees) that i remained in short-sleeves. when i got home i think my arms are a bit tan from being out in a t-shirt the past few days.

a package awaited me on my doorstep: my stokes field guide to the birds of north america. it's thick, like a dictionary, all 792 pages, filled with photos, and comes with a CD of 600 birdsongs of 150 common birds. i wasn't expecting it to be so big, definitely not something you bring around, more like a reference guide (for something more pocketable, they have something called a pocket guide). one thing i noticed about this guide is that it has no real book smell (perhaps it's because it's a 5-year old guide).