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my parents came to pick me up at 10am this morning for a baifu supply run in south boston. i saw for myself that all the tents were gone, but there were still a few dozen homeless people hanging around the area, though far less from what it used to be (probably a combination of enforcement and the cold weather).

supply chain issues continue, though not as bad compared to a year ago. familiar ingredients either were out of stock or possibly discontinued (3-deer brand pickled green mustards, flat noodles, usual brand chashao powder), and the trick was to find a proper substitute.

everyone in the store wore masks, chinese people are particularly covid careful. i think even if boston were to lift the mask mandate, chinese businesses - particularly supermarkets - would still require customers to wear masks.

we left by 11:30am, stopping by the cafe to drop off the supplies, before heading to belmont.

my mother made rice noodles for lunch while my father ate some of my leftover chicken burrito bowl. he didn't want any mexican cheese or sour cream, but i did add some chopped cilantro.

after lunch i flew the drone to oakley country club, standing on the top of a stepladder so i'd be higher and hopefully get better radio signal. i also visited the reservoir, burbank school, and the new high school. i tried to see if i could make it to belmont center but it's too far, especially since it was on the other side of a hill. i flew long enough that the battery almost ran out, as i brought the drone back for a landing.

afterwards i went outside to look for rabbit tracks and to figure out how it was coming inside. to be honest, i still have no idea. the tracks seem to be mostly along the south and western border of the backyard. i saw both large tracks and small tracks. small trakc surprised me, i didn't think rabbits had bunnies in the middle of winter. in searching for food, they'd chewed up some rose canes and i even saw some bites on a quince branch. once the snow thaws out and exposes the grass, the rabbits will have something to eat again.

there was also a lot of birds, seems like everyone made an appearance: house finches, chickadees, blue jays, house sparrow, song sparrow, white-throated sparrow, downy woodpeckers, cardinal, even a robin. the blue jays came because i put out some peanuts once again.

even though it was cold and a little windy, it was also sunny, and was warm if you kept out of the shadows. my mother and i went for another walk, this time to the newly renovated glacken field. we had to walk in the streets because they didn't shovel the sidewalk. to get back, we cut through a cambridge housing development neighborhood, behind the belmont cemetery.

in the late afternoon i went down to the basement for my weekly check of our house plants. i treated some tiny mealybugs with alcohol swabs on the gardenia and corner jasmine. i also discovered some mealybugs on the prayer plants, which i treated my spraying them down with neem oil in the sink. i sprayed neem oil on the lemon verbana as well to get rid of the small amount of aphids. i then did a mosquito bit soil drench on all the plants except for the cactuses.

after dinner i got a ride home.

today we generated the most electricity this year (all 2 months of it so far), producing about 2.5kWh more than roughly this time last year. i think the combination of the cold temperature and the late winter sun makes for super solar conditions.