this morning i watered both my own backyard and my community garden plot. since planting the backyard hydrangeas, i've yet to water them. at the garden, there were just 2 other gardeners there, one of them being anne marie, doing some maintenance work on the hose. returning home, i left for belmont close to noontime, the motorcycle making quick work of the trip.

one of the orchids have started to flower, the opening bud resembling a reptile head with fangs. i didn't think they'd open so soon, was expecting the buds to get even bigger. it doesn't even seem possible that so much flower can fit inside one of those buds. whenever i'm in belmont i inspect the orchids for mealybugs, and take them outside to spray with insecticidal soap. they continue to get them, but just 1-2, and not all the plants. hopefully i can control it with the soap, and not have to uproot the plants to clean the grow medium, because apparently mealybugs can also live off of the roots.

i brought over the 3 windmills i bought from the dollar store yesterday. they're not the best windmills because the head can't pivot horizontally, so the wind has to catch it at a particular angle for the windmills to spin. but when they do spin, it's pretty dazzling. i read that these "scare tape" materials only work for birds, and don't deter animals like rabbits, which is what i why i got them originally. they look pretty though, add some liveliness to the garden.

my mother made wontons for lunch. sprinkled with some of our garden cilantro. afterwards i went outside to spray the lupines again. this time i made a whole gallon of insecticidal soap (5 ysbp to 1 gallon) and used the pump spray as it's better able to get underneath the leaves because of the wand.

the aphids used to have a waxy coating but the all the ones we've found now were green aphids. maybe the insecticidal soap washed off the coating, hastening their demise. but within an aphid colony, there are typically green ones, and those are also the ones with wings, able to fly away. i'm still a little confused as how they got there, as we never had any aphid problems with the lupines before. but all it takes is one aphid to create a whole colony since they can reproduce by asexual cloning. by father also started applying sealant on the picnic table.

by early evening the orchid flower had opened up even more, now looking more like an orchid than a turtle/snake head.

my mother made ground beef with pickled long beans. unfortunately it was served with rice porridge (mushy on mushy), when i think it goes better with regular rice (mushy on dry). my father also made some scallion pancakes.

the weather turned even colder as i was riding home, but fortunately i brought my jacket. riding the motorcycle doesn't allow me to play pokemon, but there is no spot on my way home that has several pokemon gyms all nearby, and i usually stop there to see if i can join a gym to harvest my coins.