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the month of may is not only traditional moving day for thousands of graduating college students across boston, but it's also moving day for my indoor grown seedlings. i went out onto my backyard deck to select the candidates i'd be planting in my community garden plot: 2 rutgers heirloom tomatoes, 2 summer choice tomatoes, 2 cherry tomatoes, 4 japanese eggplants, 2 hungarian wax peppers, 3 habanero peppers, and 4 thai basils.

with a box of plants strapped to the bike of my bike, i gently pedaled my way down to the garden. i spent nearly 2 hours in the garden, not leaving until 12:30pm, sweating and caked in dirt. nobody except me was stupid enough to work on such a hot day (i wore jeans when i could've easily worn shorts), the few people i saw were just visiting.

the hardest part was deciding where to plant everything. even though i have a bit more space this year because i moved most of the ornamental grass, it still felt like i didn't have enough room. i clumped all the tomatoes on the eastern side of the plot, which gets the most sun. i made a mistake and grouped them in such a way that once i added the tomato cages, it was nearly impossible to walk through that area. into each hole i also sprinkled some plant-tone fertilizer. it smells terrible but i've gotten used to it, now it smells like future fecundity. i left a space in the southeastern corner for some squash. i also had to rearrange my bricks and stones, of which i suddenly seem to have too much. those take up space too, which might explain why i felt there wasn't a lot of planting room. on the southern edge i planted a row of thai basil, and on the western side i planted hot peppers, with eggplants sort of centrally located in the plot.

afterwards i returned home and took the motorcycle to belmont. my father was outside mowing the lawn. i did a little bit of yard work as well but going inside to have lunch, which consisted of the leftover salt and pepper porkchop with rice my father bought yesterday from chinatown but i didn't eat because i was still too stuffed from the lamb jam.

after lunch my father and i continued working in the backyard. he finished mowing the lawn, i was clearing the tomato cages and removing all the leaves from the pruned off lavender branches. our backyard neighbor was also doing some work, hired some contractors to put up a new fence after the previous fence was blown over from our winter storms.

later we cleared a new section of garden, a triangle piece of land bordered by the grapevines, bamboo grove, and sourwood sapling. we'd discussed it yesterday, this spot was an easy choice for conversion since there wasn't any grass growing on it anyway. the soil looked compact but when i dug into it with a spade, it was actually pretty soft. underground there were some stray fine bamboo rhizome hairs, and we even came across an expanding wisteria root which we pulled out.

we're turning this area into a sunny perennial bed, so we can relocated some plants in the garden that aren't doing well because they're not getting enough sun, like the peonies (shaded by norwegian maple and japanese maple) and hydrangea (shaded by lilacs). we planted the red peony in a central location, soon to have other peony neighbors. eventually over time this new perennial garden will become shady, when and if the nearby kwanzan flowering cherry tree grow big enough to cast a large shadow, but that's not until at least 10 more years. this turned out to be a really good location, as we can easily see it from the living room window, unlike the other perennial flowering beds.

we were pretty certain that we'd break another production record today, with the sky clear for nearly most of the day. around 2pm there was a bit of wispy high clouds which affected the graph line just a little but it didn't matter in the end. at every point throughout the day (other than the plateau) the production was just a fraction higher compared to the previous record. not only that, we broke 50kWh for the very first time, the final number 50.62kWh. during the final few hours of production, high clouds started filling in, which actually helped to reflect back the fading sunlight, giving us additional energy.

i motorcycled home after dinner, my upstairs neighbors already back. i was happy to see that my timer light switch had worked, my porch light shining brightly (too bright, i need to replace the CFL bulb at some point). after a shower, i watched game 4 between the celtics and the cavaliers. it wasn't a blowout like game 3, the game was much closer, and boston was competitive at least, but the celtics still lost, there was no answer for lebron, who simply dominated. game 5 will return to boston on wednesday.