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feeding my fish this morning, i noticed there were just 2 left. i looked for the third, which seemed to be tangled in some hair algae. i set it free but instead of swimming away, it sort of sank lower in the aquarium. i gently scooped it up and put it in a quarantine cup floating in the tank. the fish didn't look to be in good condition, misshapen, starving. i'll keep in quarantine hospice until it dies, quickly will probably be soon as it can barely swim anymore. i like to think i take good care of my tetras but from a original of 11 fish (september 2017) i'm now down to just 2. how the rest died i'm not quite sure. most of them i never found the bodies, they sort of just dissolved. while i was at it i pulled out as much hair algae as i could, but will probably need a few more passes to get the tank clean.

before noontime i took a quick trip to the nearby star market to get a half gallon of whole milk to make my matcha latte for lunch.

i went about planting my wet napkin germinated tomato seeds. the cool thing was when i opened up the napkin, any seeds that were stuck to the other side of the napkin had germinated because the roots were growing within the napkin. there was actually more germination that i thought, a total of 9 seeds had germinated (out of 28 seeds), and probably more to come within the next few days. all the seeds were encased in a transparent jelly coating. i prepared 6 pots with soil and decided to only plant the 6 healthiest sprouts. they were super delicate and hard to remove from the napkin, and i managed to break the roots of 3 of the seedlings.

i ended up planting the rest, even one with a slightly missing root tip. so now i'm wondering how much longer before the tiny sprouts will break out from the soil. i wasn't expecting the roots of the sprouts to be so kinked. i wouldn't recommend pre-germination unless you were trying to determine the viability of some old seeds. i feel it's actually slower, because you wait for the seeds to pre-germinate, and the once they do, you transplant them into soil and wait some more for them to break free from the soil. plus the seedlings are really delicate and liable to get damaged during the transplant. the remaining seeds will continue to germinate in the napkin, if there are any good looking sprouts i might replant them into some of these pots. i also pre-germinated 9 hungarian wax seeds. the ones i planted back on march 24th have yet to germinate, and i have a feeling the seeds are dead.

finally i planted around round of stock seeds. i should've planted them earlier, since stocks are an cool weather flower and don't do well once the temperature gets warmer. i sort of regret purchasing a bunch of annual flower seeds, i usually prefer raising perennials instead since i get more bang for the buck. i planted them in the leftover muffin containers, i didn't make any drainage holes, just sprayed the top with water before closing the container to trap the moisture.

in the afternoon i went to the porter square star market to get some vanilla caramel green mountain coffee for my mother before stopping by the cafe to drop them off. my parents gave me a roll of bagels before i biked to mount auburn cemetery. it was grey this morning but by the afternoon the sun came out and it was warm enough for just a t-shirt. i went to mount auburn cemetery primarily to check out some flowering cherries, so i could compare them to the ones i've been seeing around town. it was a pleasant outing, but there really aren't that many flowering cherries in the cemetery, or if there are, they're scattered throughout the property, and would be quite the trek to find and see them all.

i saw autumnalis, okame, yoshino, yoshino "akebono", sargent, accolade, and hally jolivette. hally jolivette was the most interesting, the flowers are either white or pink, a detail a casual observer might not notice at first.

there were other flowering trees, including all sorts of magnolia that from a distance i'd occasionally mistaken for cherries since their flowers are usually white or pink just like cherries. i found a quince bush that had red flowers compared to the quince bush at my parents' place which has coral flowers. there were also some bright pink azaleas. as far as wildlife, an unusual bird call brought my attention high up in a tree where i spotted a bird with a red head. originally i thought it was a flicker but when i came back and reexamined the photo, it was a red-bellied woodpecker.

left the cemetery about 5pm and returned home. it was starting to get a bit chilly but i was too lazy to dig the sweater out of my bag.

i did some reshuffling of my grow closet. i moved all the tomatoes to the lowest shelf, where the grow lights are set higher so there's more headroom. one thing i noticed is the hyacinth beans are starting to get root bound. they don't seem to be growing all that much on the surface, but underground they've been making tons of roots.

i made an egg-ham-avocado bagel sandwich for dinner. i've got leftover ham and avocados i have to use up before they go bad, so it looks like this is what i'll be eating the rest of the week. i'm already starting to get sick of it!

i renewed my parking permit online. cambridge sent me a postcard a few weeks ago, i thought it was to let me know that permits don't expire until the end of may, but turns out that was also the reminder to renew your permit. $25 which includes a visitor's pass. as always, they're going to send me a parking sticker to put on my non-existent motorcycle window.