after a yogurt for lunch i finally went down to the community garden around 12:30pm to do some work. the first and last time i visited my plot was 11 days ago prior to the garden workday. it was a quick visit, i didn't get a good chance for a detailed survey of what i had growing. today i had more time. my primary focus was to dig out the ornamental grass left behind by the previous gardener now taking up a good corner of my garden. it wasn't easy to dig out, the roots a thick mat that pretty much had to be carved out of the ground. while i was there i spoke with robin, one of the new gardeners from last year (saw her at the meeting), but who's actually been here a few years but took consecutive sabbaticals to give birth. she had with her two toddlers. i was impressed with her garden knowledge, able to identify some of the plants growing in my plot, and seemed to be genuinely curious as to what i was growing. she went to eat lunch with her children as i continued to dig out the ornamental grass. afterwards i did some weeding, pulling out some lawn grass, some escaped mints, and some creeping buttercups. there's still a patch of ornamental grass in the northeastern corner but i'm going to leave it for the time being as it's growing with some sensitive ferns and i don't want to disturb them.

while flipping up a brick i saw a worm i'd never seen before. it liked like a flat leech with a stripe. i flicked it out with my digging tool, thought nothing much of it. only later did i realize what it was: Bipalium kewense AKA hammerhead flatworm, a large invasive predatory land planarian native to southeast asia. though harmless to humans, it feeds on earthworms (but also reportedly cannibalizes its own kind as well). though they can reproduce sexually, they're known for their asexual fragmentation: split them into pieces, each piece regenerate into its own worm, essentially the stuff of nightmare fuel. there isn't a whole lot of info online, much of it seems to just repeat one another. but now it makes me worried about tranplanting the ornamental grass to my parents' backyard, because i don't want to accidentally introduce these flatworms should they be living in the dirt of the grasses.

while i was photographing some of the colorful flowers in other neighboring plots, i noticed someone was coming into the garden to work. i sort of caught sight of them in my periphery, a bearded white vegan-hipster type with long shaggy hair tied up in a man bun, an indonesian/south asian woman following behind him carrying a baby, and then two senior chinese couple a short distance behind them. that's when it turned surreal. "tony?" i heard the elderly man call my chinese name. "tony, is that you?" he asked again, almost afraid to be too loud in case he made a mistake. "yes, i'm tony," i answered back, confused as how this man might know me, searching my mental rolodex for possible matches.

finally it dawned on me: "are you liting's parents?" i asked. sure enough it was, since they live around the area. it took me a while to realize that indian woman i saw was actually liting, and that man her husband. her parents told me they've been on the wait list for 2 years now, finally getting a plot this season. it's one of the worst plots in the garden, in the ultra shady northwest corner, but it's one of the new raised bed plots, which have fresh untainted soil, despite being a smaller plot. they asked how my parents were, i told them how my grand uncle passed away back in december.

finished with my gardening, i went home to gather my things before taking the motorcycle to belmont.

my father was outside mowing the lawn, the first grasscut of the season. he asked for a plastic bag, said there was a dead rabbit outside. "baby rabbit?" i asked, as he confirmed my fear. it died underneath the hawthorn tree, whether from starvation or exposure to the elements i'm not sure. it wasn't a good feeling, and i thought about the other baby rabbits that fled the nest 2 days ago. my heart hoped they survived, but my head was telling me their chances weren't good. i ended up burying it underneath the pussy willow tree.

later i found another bunny, this one still alive. it seemed distressed because it was just sitting by a sunny exposed corner of the fence that my mother had blocked off earlier with bricks so it was stuck in the backyard. my father said we should capture it and try to raise it, but if this bunny hadn't been weaned yet, it would die too without mother's milk, so i told him we should just leave it alone. of course i didn't follow my own advice and a few minutes later i went back and tried to catch it. the rabbit still had a lot of life though, managed to escape from my grasp and hid underneath some hostas. i left it alone, seems like it wasn't near death after all.

we still weren't able to break the all time record, it's been 2 weeks and we've yet to have a crystal clear day. i've only realized how rare cloudless days are around here when it becomes something i wish for every day. there were a lot of high wispy clouds in the sky. we did great in the morning, but then a bit of production loss due to atmospheric obfuscation. by late afternoon the graph traced the maximum production trendline from 2 weeks ago, which is unusual because it's actually supposed to go beyond that as everyday we have more daylight. sunset today was 7:50pm.

this morning i finally finished reading all our wrongs todays by elan mastai. i got the book in january but only now done with reading. it was pretty good, had some profound ideas, but i still think the library at mount char, the children of time, and the song of achilles were better. i think the problem was i didn't finish reading it one sitting, breaking it up over months while i read other books, so the momentum was broken, and i forgot bits and pieces.