my original plan was to ride down to the arnold arboretum in jamaica plain to check out the wintersweet, like i do every spring. i've been there late march, i've been there late april, and none of those times i've ever even seen a flower bud. so maybe early april would do the trick. but then i was trying to find some info on just when exactly wintersweet actually bloom, and i read around january and february, in the middle of winter. so i'm already too late this year. in that case i decided not to go, save myself the 1-1/2 hours roundtrip by bike. i'll go again when the cherry blossoms are in bloom, bring my drone.

i actually had lunch today for a change, besides just a matcha latte, when i discovered the avocados had ripened. i peeled off some frozen leftover ham and grilled them in a pan along with an egg to make my egg-ham-avocado-sriracha everything bagel sandwich plus the usual matcha latte.

i went to star market in the afternoon to get some cuties mandarins on sale ($2.50 per 3lbs. bag). i'd also thought about going to chinatown today to gather some korean kimchi ingredients, but i'll wait until next week.

afterwards i went on a walk around the neighborhood looking for flowering trees (namely cherries) to photograph. i spotted a few yesterday from the sky, including a large pink weeping cherry on crescent street. whether a flowering tree blooms profusely or just had a few blossoms seems to be entirely dependent on how much sun it gets. and now that some of the white blossom cherries are coming out, i'm having a hard time distinguishing them (they all look like variations of yoshino cherries to me, i need to go back and study some more cherry blossom references, or maybe another visit to mt.auburn cemetery for a refresher course on flowering cherries).

in the late afternoon i decided to finally do my taxes. there's less pressure this year since they extended the deadline to may 17th. my taxes are complicated, just a W2, a 1099-NEC, and 1099-G. if anything i'd be getting a refund because most of my unemployment is tax except by both federal and state. it didn't take long, 15-20 minutes with turbotax deluxe, looks like i can look forward to another $1600 in refunds.

for dinner i made another bagel sandwich, washed it down with some cold chocolate milk and lukewarm rooibos tea. i ate while watching the mauritanian (2021).