my mother called me this morning, told me i had to get to belmont because my sister had dropped off hailey. my parents were going on a costco supply run, and with nobody in the house, hailey won't stop barking. so i quickly got dressed and rode to my parents' place, getting there by 9:45am. even after my parents left, hailey was looking out the door, still barking in her hoarse old dog voice. i had to convince her that everything was alright, and she went to sleep on the couch after we took a survey of the backyard.

after my parents came back around 11am, my father and i went to the cafe to drop off the supplies and to do some tree pruning. using an electric pole saw, he trimmed a neighbor's mulberry tree that had several large branches overhanging into the cafe parking lot. while he sawed off large branches, i worked the fiskars bypass lopper and cut the branches down to smaller sizes so they could fit in the garbage refuse bins. after that we went to my sister's backyard and trimmed some neighbor's arborvitae that were growing close to the house. i actually they looked kind of cool, provided a green canopy, but my sister wanted them removed because she said it blocked what little sunlight she gets in eastern facing windows. we only used the lopper to trim the evergreens since they were a soft wood. we did have to use the ladder and climb onto the dormer to reach some higher branches. it felt a little dangerous and i wasn't sure if my shoes had enough grip on the sloped surface. we trimmed those branches quickly before climbing done. my father also trimmed back some rhododendrons on the front yard. my sister returned home with hailey in tow.

we returned to belmont by 1pm. i had some microwaved sichuan shrimp wontons for lunch, my parents had instant tonkotsu ramen. my mother told me that two of our buttercup squashes had gone moldy on the blossom ends. maybe they weren't completely ripe before we harvested them.

the patriots-texans game was on at 1pm. i watched the first half but when new england didn't seem like they were winning, i stopped watching.

instead i helped my father set up plant shelves in our basement grow room. i brought 4 of my 2ft (24W) barrina LED grow lights. i don't think my father understood how to use them until i showed him what they look like mounted underneath the shelves. after that he got into it and cut a few wooden planks to length to make better planting shelves. it also helped that i ordered a bunch of 1020 heavy duty plastic seed starting trays, which fit on the shelves perfectly, and allow us to water without worrying about dripping. i think by next weekend it'll be cold enough (40's at nights) for us to move all our houseplants into the basement and run our grow room at full capacity. earlier today my father was also trimming all our jasmines. even though they haven't turned yellow like the gardenia, the leaves have lost some of their green and look dry.

i returned to the football game and was surprised to see the patriots were done by just a touchdown. i watched intermittently, but watched the rest of the game when the score was tied and the pats were making a run to take the lead. new england ended up winning on a field goal kick with time expiring, 25-22. the patriots now have a 2-3 record going into next sunday against the cowboys.

in the early evening we went to my aunt and uncle's house in arlington for dinner. my sister would've come but if she left hailey alone in the house she'd bark non-stop, so she couldn't attend. there were clumps of large honey mushrooms growing in some wood chips out by the side yard (which was actually an old stump that had been grinded down).

we left around 7:20pm. after getting back to the house, i gathered up my things and returned to cambridge. i was going to take a shower, but the red sox game was going into extra innings so i postponed it until after the game. boston was close to losing in the 13th inning, when a tampa bay player hit a ball that looked to be a homerun as it went out of the ballpark. but in a freaky chain of event, the ball actually hit the wall first, ricocheted off of a red sox player, before flying out. it was ruled a double, preventing the rays from scoring, and inning ended soon afterwards. then catcher christian vazquez swings at the first pitch he sees, sending the ball into the stands for a 2-run homer, winning the game in walk-off fashion.

at one point i was watching both the red sox game and the sunday night football game between the buffalo bills and the kansas city chiefs, a matchup between two NFL heavyweights. playing in kansas city, buffalo was surprisingly dominant. going into halfway there was an extended rain delay so i managed to take my shower. the second half didn't start until after 11pm. the chiefs were in such a deficit that they couldn't catch up to the bills. i really like the bills, it's kind of refreshing as a patriots fan to not dominate the division after 2 decades. josh allen looks like a normal guy but when he's on the field it's like a magician performing tricks. he represents the next generation of dynamic QB's, like patrick mahones and lamar jackson.