now that i have my motorcycle, i can make farther trips that would've been too exhausting to do by bicycle. temperature this morning was a little chilly (lower 60's) after the past few days of 80's. i went to the medford harbor freight to get a pair of garden gloves (we have a bunch in the house but they always get misplaced) and a folding pruning saw. after that i went to aldi's where there was a line about a dozen people long but it went fairly quick. the attendant outside was wiping down carts and handing them to customers still waiting in line. i was there primarily to pick up some hazelnut coffee for my mother but ended up getting $30 worth of groceries.

back at home by 11am, i walked to star market to get some baby back ribs that were on sale ($1.97/lbs. frozen). i was going to take the bicycle to belmont, but my saddlebags were already stuffed with aldi's groceries, it was easier just to take the motorcycle.

my mother made some beef noodle soup for lunch with some of that weichuan noodles i got her from chinatown. i'd forgotten how good real chinese noodles can taste, remind me to get myself a box the next time i go into boston (next week).

my father continued tidying up the garage. there wasn't too much garden work for me to do in the backyard. my sister came back with hailey again, i set up the sprinkler on low so her dog can play in the water for a few minutes. two bunnies continue to be spotted in the backyard, impossible to drive them out. i got some baby carrots from aldi's which i put in the live trap, hoping they would be better rabbit bait.

3 pink peony buds have bloomed in the southeastern corner perennial bed. there's a few more side buds, not sure if they'll be blooming as well. this is only the 2nd season this transplanted peony has been at this new location but it seems to be doing well in the full sun. the peony in the behind-the-garage perennial bed is a lot bigger and more established, with more flower buds. because it doesn't get as much sunlight, it doesn't bloom as quickly, but the blooms last longer. some spiderworts have also bloomed, showing off their triangular magenta-colored flowers that only last a day. our blue hydrangea is showing some promise by making flower buds on nearly every terminal branches. i thought they only made flower buds on the tips of last year's branches, maybe of which were damaged by the cold. turns out that's not true, new branches emerging from last year's old branches will all make flower buds. this will be the garden highlight for this year. inside, the peach orchid now has three flowers, when yesterday there was just two; the flower seemed to have magically appeared fully formed overnight.

i ordered another nest thermostat, this time for my grand uncle's upstairs apartment. the tenants there are pretty cavalier about cranking up the heat during the wintertime, especially since they don't pay for the utilities. their last heating bill was $300. with a smart thermostat, we can keep an eye on their consumption and turn it down when nobody's home or late at night. through the masssave program, after manufacturer ($50) and eversource rebate ($100, today was the last day to get the rebate), the nest was just $99 (with free shipping, not including taxes).

i helped my mother order a gooseneck tablet stand (tryone $31), so she can watch her ipad while lying in bed, which has been a dream of hers for many years. if i ordered it earlier last week we could've received it by tomorrow, but now it'll get here on wednesday, which isn't too bad. seems like maybe amazon is getting back to their normal delivery schedule.

my sister's godmother has been in taiwan for nearly a month now. one good thing about her not being here is nobody to hog the netflix account. since my parents gave her access to netflix, she's been using it to watch shows, so often times i can't get in because we've already exceded the 2 person limit. it's not a big deal, i don't watch netflix all that much anyway, just a little annoying. since she can't log into a US netflix account from taiwan, i thought i was safe. that's is until today, when i couldn't watch anything again, said my mother and my sister's godmother were both using the account. how could that be? the only thing i can think of is she somehow got access to a US-address VPN. i figured i'd wait, since she can't be online the whole night, but she never logged off. most likely she paused what she was watching, and it locked the quota. i ended up logging out all devices from the netflix account and logging everyone back in. unless she knows the login info and password, she's locked out of netflix for the time being. she shouldn't even be watching it from taiwan anyway.

in the late afternoon my parents made some chive pockets. my father drove to arlington to deliver them to my aunt. while he was gone, i moved all our tender houseplants back inside the house as the temperature tonight is supposed to drop into the 40's. tomorrow's high will only be in the 60's with night time temperature in the 40's again, before warming back up (possibly for good) on tuesday. our jasmines and cactuses will stay in the grow room until then, while the reed and gardenia will be in the sunroom. while inspecting the jasmines i found some more mealybugs on the tender tips. using an alcohol-dipped cotton swab, i dabbed at the mealybugs to kill them.

by noontime we'd already broken the all time single month production record. the production for today nearly beat the all-time single day record as well, with a final number of 55.52kWh. because temperature was in the 60's instead of the 80's, panels were slightly more efficient, which in turn meant we managed to break that 7kW ceiling.

the final grand total for may was 1.320MWh, beating the previous single month record set during july 2018 of 1.290MWh, a difference of 30kWh. granted, in 2018 we were still using a 6kW inverter which was clipping our production. had we had the inverter we have now (10kW) maybe july 2018 would still be the record month.

naturally we got credit for may instead of having to pay the electric company, though only $29, slightly disappointing, but the billing cycle ended on 5/25, before we had 4 days of 50kWh+ production. we need all the credit we can get if we're planning on running our grow room again during the winter.