i started my morning with a check of my seedlings on the backyard porch. the neighbor's large oak tree is currently shedding catkins and my plants were buried in them. i'm hoping to move my plants this week to the community garden. i did some math, trying to figure out how many grow bags i need. i currently have 5 existing grow bags in my garden, but i need at least one more: 2 regular tomatoes, 1 cherry tomatoes, 2 eggplants, 1 ground cherry. i probably also need another bag to grow 4 small hot pepper plants.

i left for belmont by 10:45am. it was another warm day, warm enough for shorts again. it was also still very windy. once i arrived, i told my father we needed to go to home depot and ocean state job lot (OSJL). we left by noontime, going to home depot first. i realized in the car that everything i needed to get there i could probably find at OSJL and cheaper. i figured i'd hold on to the receipt just in case. but apparently my father wanted to check out some wires and nuts for the battery project so it wasn't all in vain. i got 3 packs of jiffy pots (3" 15 pots each, $2.48/pack) and a flex-a-spout extension ($9).

to get to OSJL, we went a way we've never gone before, essentially following the southern shore of the charles river all the way west into waltham. what's great about this way is not only is it fast, but there were hardly any traffic lights, just a very nice ride.

at OSJL we were looking for shepherd's hooks. they said they had them online, but when we got to the store, the shelves were empty. i even went to customer service to inquire. the woman checked their inventory and said they should have 7 in stock, but they might still be in the warehouse, and there wasn't anyone to take them out. i just might try the medford OSJL later in the week. we just might need to make a trip down there anyway, to replenish our chinese sausage supply from bianco and sons.

we left OSJL empty-handed, but we did go next door and get two subway subs. this store doesn't take coupons, so we paid the full price, which is about $10 for a foot-long sandwich. we got teriyaki onion chicken and their new teriyaki onion steak. the store's been there for a while, but the owners looked new, and they were a little slow with the order, like they were still figuring things out. i noticed on their back counter 3 different delivery apps running off of three different tablets: doordash, uber eats, and grubhub. the grubhub looked especially familiar since that's the same one we have.

we got back home by 1:45pm. my mother was literally waiting at the door for her sandwich. she shared the teriyaki steak with my father while i ate the whole teriyaki chicken.

while my father went to go take a nap, i was busy in the backyard filling up the 45 jiffy pots with organic miracle-gro potting soil and soaking them in water. i felted some itchiness on my ankle that i thought was just dry skin but when i looked down it was a mosquito. are they back already? made me want to go back to wearing pants again. later my father came out to help me dig out the fattest ground cherry seedlings from RB4 and transplant them into the jiffy pots. once these a little bigger, we'll give them away for free for cafe customers.

we tilled RB4 and planted the following: 2 tomatoes, 3 eggplants, and 4 hot peppers. i made sure these newly planted seedlings as well as the ones from yesterday were well protected from rabbits and other critters looking to make a meal of them.

we repotted 2 plants: a jasmine and the fudingzhu osmanthus. the jasmine was in a pot that was disintegrating, we moved it into one of the larger heavy duty pots i found a few days ago. i filled the bottom with some grass/leave compost and the rest with cambridge city compost. as for the osmanthus, this was either the 3rd or 4th time we repotted. my father went with an all-compost medium this time, but when he watered it afterwards, it didn't seem to be draining that well, even though the compost itself seemed very good at draining. we also planted a single ground cherry plant in a heavy duty pot, half grass/leave compost, half city compost. that one seemed to drain better, maybe a mulch/compost bottom is the way to go?

my mother hasn't cooked at all since returning from taiwan (other than the wonton soup yesterday), relying on my father instead. tonight he stir-fried some swiss chard i bought last week and cooked up some smoked kielbasa sausages. we've never had swiss chard before, always seen it at super markets and thought it looked pretty with its red-orange-yellow stems. the ones we cooked up had mostly red stems, and the juice was red as well. it reminded me of beets, and it tasted like beets as well, had that earthy flavor. it didn't surprise me that chards and beets are in the same family, and chards are also called leafy beets. supposed swiss chards have a bitter taste when eaten raw but loses it after cooking.

i left by 7pm, with a potential rainstorm heading our way. it did eventually rain a bit later, but not enough to affect the rain barrels, as only 0.08" of rain fell. it looks to be dry all the way into next weekend, my father said we have enough water in our rain barrels to last another 5 days before they run dry.

with no basketball games until tomorrow, i basically scoured the internet for any kind of celtics coverage, whether it be youtube videos, audio podcasts, or online articles.