this morning i went to the newly opened citizens bank in porter square to deposit the rent money annie gave me last night. i only just noticed this branch a few days ago. normally i go to the one in union square, but i try avoiding that area ever since the MBTA green extension construction started. like a lot of these new banks, they did away with traditional teller counters and replaced it instead with tables and chairs, so when you go to the bank it's more like visiting a financial consultant. but where do they keep the money, and aren't they afraid of robbers? i spoke with a young albanian woman who told me they've been opened since april. after receiving my money and giving me a balance statement, she told me that i was pre-qualified for a citizens credit card with a $15K credit line. i wasn't interested at first, but decided to get it as a backup card, in case i ever needed emergency funds.

as it was a sunny day, i moved my lotus seeds out to my back porch to get a bit of sun. i had two jars, one with floating seeds, the other with sinking seeds. i ended up tossing a few floating seeds, they seemed too far rotten to ever germinate.

i took down my grow closet setup today, packed up all the fluorescent light banks, scooped out the dried gravel into buckets, and washed the plastic trays. after moving all that equipment to the basement, i moved back all the storage boxes that'd been taking up my bedroom back into the closet where they belonged. though i was disappointed with this season's failed seedlings, i think i'll try again next spring, i'm not entirely discouraged from indoor gardening. the key is to use better soil next time.

annie came home early, a bit after 5pm, while i was making edamame beans in the kitchen. she retreated to her bedroom, only coming out briefly to get something to eat in the kitchen or to use the bathroom, i never saw her again for the rest of the evening. i love edamame beans, i feel like they're a good example of healthy snacks, but i have no portion control when it comes to these beans and i'll eat the whole bag in one sitting.

it was a sunny day with plenty of puffy clouds, the sort of day that might've been bad for production, but we made out okay in the end, with 47.23kWh. anytime during the summer season when we can hover around 50kWh is a good day. we made enough electricity today that should we be able to make 52kWh+ tomorrow, we will have exceded all the production for february - in just under 15 days. long range forecast looks like a cloudy and rainy next week though. i have no doubt we will reach 1MWh+ this month, just wondering if we can set a new single month production record (the most we ever made in a month is 1.29MWh back in july 2018).

for dinner i made some ramen. this concludes my week long menu of semi-processed dinners. i'm hoping to eat better next week. i ate while watching the red sox orioles game. the final score was 13-2, at one point in the game it felt like a homerun derby, when the red sox scored 6 homeruns. not sure what happened but baltimore just totally collapsed. best part is yankees lost tonight, so the sox are just 5.5 games behind new york, and 6 games behind the rays, who took the AL east lead when they won tonight as well.

after the latest evening water change of my lotus seeds, i've now come to the conclusion that of the remaining seeds that i have, none of them will germinate. all of the ones that have a tiny sprout also show signs of decomposition and they have a faint rotten smell as well, like a festering wound. i washed them out a bit, but i'm not hopeful. i did read that Nelumbo nucifera (pink) germinate twice as fast as Nelumbo lutea (north american yellow) seeds. maybe these remaining pods are lutea and they might eventually germinate after all but i doubt it. what i'm guessing happened is i exposed too much of the white interior when i cut an opening in the seeds. the first two seeds sprouted because i was lucky. also it didn't help that i added a heater: it increased the germination rate but it also increased the rate of bacteria growth that would eventually rot all the remaining seeds.

i have a confession: last night i did buy more lotus seeds, but from china, though only $1.40 for 30 seeds. they won't arrive until after a few weeks so it'd be too late to germinate them. not satisfied with just two lotus seedlings, i ended up going to the same US dealer and ordering 10 more seeds for $7. they should arrive next week. the latest time to start growing lotus seeds here in the northeast is mid-june, so i will barely make the cutoff when the seeds finally arrive. learning my lesson, i'm going to just barely cut into the seeds. and i won't use the heater until the seeds have sprouted an inch or two.