another thing: he's with me all the time. from the moment he's finished with dinner, he's in the living room for the next 4 hours until 11pm. recently i noticed he's pushing it even later, not going to bed until midnight. currently i don't mind because he's watching breaking bad, and i have a chance to revisit a cherished series, but once he's binged all the episodes, i think he's just going to find something else, courtesy of netflix and HBO go. god forbid he gets into the wire or sopranos.
i noticed a few days ago that there's some sediments at the bottom of my insulated bottle. not sure if it's from the bottle itself, or from the ice cubes, or the tap water. i thought i rinsed it out once before, but today i saw there was still what looked to be fine grains of sand at the bottom of the bottle. i gave it another thorough rince and scrub down, hopefully this will take care of it.
i didn't have lunch until i biked to belmont in the afternoon for some leftover barbecue. later my father took down the tent they set up for the barbecue on tuesday. i watered the garden and then put the cover over the grill as it's going to rain most of the day tomorrow.
i only have 3 malva zebrina plants in the belmont backyard. one of them seems to produce flowers that are more violet than the other plants. it could just be a fluke but if this plant does produce more violet flowers, i'll make sure to save some of its seeds to propagate them elsewhere.
the hawthorn tree seems to be doing well in its little corner of the yard. ever since we chopped down the invasive black cherry and cut most of the pussy willow, there's been more sun there, which is good news not only for the hawthorn but also for the patch of garlic chives. one thing about the hawthorn is that some of the berries seemed to have been infected by some gall and form these spiky balls. hopefully it's only for a few of them and we can still get some red berries in the autumn and winter.
i showed my father my research into some possible trees for the backyard. my parents originally wanted flowering cherries and crabapples, but these trees don't live very long because they're susceptible to various diseases and pests. besides, a flowering cherry only blooms for about a week depending on the weather before all the blossoms wilt. possible potential tree candidates include purple robe locusts, sourwood, fringe tree (although slow growing), and mimosa tree. i'd also be interested in a fruit tree like persimmon or hazelnut, but these usually requiring an additional pollinating tree or two for fruit production.
even though there was still enough barbecue for dinner, my mother wanted pizza so we ordered just one pie from domino's, the everything extravaganza for $11 (typical 3-topping large carryout is $8, but for $3 more we could upgrade to a fancy pizza). i finally joined domino's reward program, which i should've done a long time ago, to earn points for free pizzas. the extravaganza turned out pretty good, with a heaping of toppings. after dinner i biked back to cambridge. i was surprised GC wasn't home yet, but he did tell me he was playing badminton with some coworkers after work. he didn't get back until 8:30pm, took a shower, made some dinner (beef noodle soup i believe, it didn't smell fishy that's all i cared about), then did a load of laundry. he finished his evening by watching 2 more breaking bad episodes until 11:30pm.