annie didn't go out until after 9am today, a rarity for her. before she left she told me if it was okay that a friend of hers came over for dinner tonight. i said no problem. no problem because i'm not going to be here.

i witnessed a crime scene this morning: the brutal mutilation and killing of my innocent avocado plant that i grew from a pit 9 months ago. it was the only to have survived from my initial batch. just recently it started making a long stalk, but no leaves yet, though probably just a matter of time. i'll never know because it was murdered by a critter, most likely a squirrel, though i'm surprised a squirrel would have the strength to pull the avocado from the jar, which was pretty big including the tangle of roots. i noticed the plant was missing and it took me a while to understand what happened. i looked nearby and there were the roots, minus the avocado pit. later when i went outside to clean up, i found half the pit along with the stalk nearby. fortunately avocado pits are easy to come by, but it'll take me close to another year before i can grow one to match the one that i had. luckily i knew annie had some avocados and when i looked into the compost bin i found a pit. i gave it a wash, stuck 3 toothpicks on each side, and set up another avocado growing station. i peeled the skin off last time but i decided to keep it on this time.

i took the bike instead of the motorcycle because of street cleaning and i didn't want to give up my cushy spot. plus it was supposed to rain tomorrow, more reason to keep the honda covered and take the fuji instead. the sky was clear this morning but by the time i left it was a dramatic mix of different clouds.

i went with my parents on a baifu supply run. nothing really noteworthy except all the junkies hanging out in the area. a pregnant black woman approached me in the store. at first i thought she was an employee asking me not to take photos, but turns out she was asking for money. i watched her do the same thing with my father and mother, neither of them giving her anything. i kept an eye on her, in case things escalated and i needed to step in. when we left, we saw even more, all congregating along a sidewalk. the shelter must've been temporarily closed or something, because it seemed like a homeless convention. city EMT personnel were also there to make sure everyone was okay. as scary as it was, it also made me feel good in a sick way, knowing that there were still parts of boston that wasn't gentrifying.

that nosy rabbit showed up again, right in the middle of the afternoon while we were working. my father and i chased it, making sure that it didn't run passed us so we could see how it was getting in and out. it finally ran to the southwestern corner of the yard where the hawthorn tree was. that used to be a common escape route until i put some wire fencing in the gap. but that rabbit was able to squeeze through the small 1x3" opening in the wire mesh. afterwards i removed the old fencing and replaced it with chicken wires, which is impossible for the rabbit to squeeze through. i also went to the northwestern corner of the backyard (where the raspberry and honeysuckle are) and found a potential gap in the perimeter which i also fortified with chicken wires. maybe that'll keep them out. i've been pretty vigilant this year in preventing rabbits from getting into the backyard. so far the only rabbit damage i've seen were a few nibbled and cut lupines and some severed pea and bean seedlings; it might have been other critters, like chipmunks, which also live in the backyard, as well as the ubiquitous squirrels who are always causing garden problems.