i juiced the last of my oranges this morning. i came across one that had a sticker, found out these were cara cara oranges, that's why they had a characteristic red flesh. makes me want to go back to haymarket next friday and get some more, since usually you'd pay extra for these compared to normal navel oranges. it's almost a waste to juice them, since the pulp probably contains a lot of additional flavors.

i had some leftover squid nuggets for lunch, mixed with some rice noodles. i then spent most of the day working in the backyard. i helped my father readjusted the wire climbing trellises behind RB0 and RB1. we pulled out the old posts - which were just old pipes and pieces of bamboos and metal bars - and replaced them with 7ft u-posts. at some point we heard a bunch of helicopters overhead so i sent up my drone as well, hoping to catch whatever was happening, but i didn't see anything. the DJI fly app did crash a few times, but i was patient, and instead of restarting my pixel 3XL phone, i waited for the app to recover, which took about a minute. i did fly above our lilac bushes, which are huge from seen from the sky at about 100ft.

around 2:30pm we went to home depot to pick up a few things: two large bags of garden soil for the grow bags in my community garden; a bag of potting soil; a watering wand; and some jiffy pots. we also visited the new roche bros. supermarket, parked in their upstairs parking garage. the place had that nice clean new supermarket quality. i'd never been to a roche bros. before, the selection and prices reminded me of star market, in that it was expensive. we did buy some eggs, which were on sale for $3/2, but still more expensive than market basket, which last week had a dozen eggs for 99¢.

we came back around 3pm. in the backyard we started filling the peat jiffy pots (30) with potting soil, then planting a wild cherry tomato seedlings into each one. they were kind of difficult to water, the potting soil seemed to contain some peat, which strange enough prevent the water from soaking into the soil. the jiffy pots were also dry, and we watered them with a combination of misting from the hose sprayer and soaking them in a bucket full of water. instead of raising them indoors, we put them outside underneath a row cover. once they get big enough, we'll give them away for free at the cafe.

the 33" 8-pattern melnor watering wand ($10) was a pleasure to use. we used to have a watering wand but it broke. the replacement wand we later bought from OSJL also broke after one season; we still use it (for the front lawn) but the shutoff valve no longer works (we did attach a hose shutdown valve at the base as a hack-fix). hopefully this melnor will last a bit longer. i like how the spray head can be adjusted to various angles. the wand gives us better reach when watering.

while my father went back inside the house, i was doing one final round of watering. that's when i noticed the water pressure on the mist setting was really low to the point of usable. i thought there was something wrong with the on-demand pump because the other patterns also seemed weak. my father came out to check and he said there might be something stuck in the spray head. sure enough, when we took it apart, there was a little piece of wood mulch stuck inside the mist pattern hole. once we dig it out with a safety pin and reassembled the spray head, we were back in business. compared to our usual sprayer, the pressure with the watering wand is slightly less. not sure why that is, but most of the time when we're watering with the spray wand, we're directly the water downwards, not horizontally like the spray gun.

for dinner my parents made noodle nuggets. i was the first to finish. i left about 7pm, get home before the rainstorm that was supposed to arrive later in the evening. i brought in my seedlings, which i set up this morning. while it was in the 60's during the early daytime, but late afternoon the temperature had dropped into the 50's.

i brought back some potting soil so i could plant 8 thai basils. afterwards i went back outside to put the cover over the motorcycle.