after bringing out all the trash bins full of dead leaves from the belmont backyard, i did a bit of front lawn raking. it sucks to be surrounded by new neighbors who take very little pride in lawn maintenance; since they don't rake their lawn, their leaves end up blowing onto my lawn instead.

after cleaning out RB0 (pulling up the remaining pepper plants, they won't survive long enough to produce anymore peppers anyway), i dug up the sweet potato plants. i was pleasantly surprised to pull up 2 clutches of large tubers. they were kind of twisted in shape, maybe due to the compacted soil, but bigger than the finger tubers i pulled up from RB2 a while back. i also dug up the sweet potatoes in RB3, but only found a few finger spuds. RB0 is different because back in the spring i added fresh soil and a bag of manure; not sure if i did the same for RB3.

the other garden project was to dig out the foxgloves from the raised beds and transplant them elsewhere in the yard. i sowed the foxglove seeds indoors back in late april. they were tiny seeds - like dust - and i wasn't sure if they'd even germinate. but grew they did, to the point where i had too many tiny seedlings by early june. they were too small to separate, and i sort of neglected them, leaving them outside. when i did finally plant them into the garden it was just an afterthought, since many were already wilting; i didn't have high hopes they'd survive, especially since they were planted so close together. as the summer season wore on, i didn't pay much attention to these foxgloves, but they managed to survive, and did pretty well, so i had a bunch of mature plants. but they had to be moved, since raised beds are for annuals and a few select perennial herbs only.

i moved the foxgloves to the perennial bed behind the garage and the perennial garden along the western wall. i still had a lot of plants so i created some more growing space behind RB4, an area where we used to garden, but then converted into a mulched footpath, but after a few seasons of neglect, that had was taken over my garlic chives and a smattering of weeds. they don't look like much, but such is the case with fall plantings. i think the perennial beds have the potential to be a showy display next season, with my collection of hollyhocks, lunarias, columbines, delphiniums, lupines, irises, various crocus bulbs, and now foxgloves as well. i take pride that i grew most of them from seeds too.

hailey was in the house the whole day, that's why my mother asked me to come home early (noontime). my mother came back right when i was outside raking the front lawn. she said she lost her seat cover but i told her about the spares i tucked away under the saddle. she also managed to break off her front reflector at some point, but she said she still had it back at the cafe (just needs to be glued back).

for dinner my mother baked the sweet potatoes in the toaster oven. they tasted okay, but some more making would've caramelized more of that potato sugar for an even sweeter finish. afterwards i motorcycled back to cambridge.