i left the house at 10:20am this morning. first stop was the community garden to water my plants. ann was there, and tom showed up briefly to water his plot before leaving without saying good bye. i feel like i'm the only person in the garden currently with squash fruits. my nigellas are also doing well, blues, dark pink, light pink, and whites. i have a large bitter melon fruit, about the length of my finger, hopefully i can get a decent harvest this season.

after leaving the garden, i went to porter square tags hardware store to pick up a bag of course orchid potting mix. i then filled up the tank at the speedway gas station before heading to belmont.

while all this was happening, my sister and father were at the cafe supervising the installation of the new countertop and cabinets. the plumber (alewife co.) also showed up at 9am to do some pipe work, but apparently he wasn't able to do the job and the contractors left briefly while waiting for him to finish. the contractors did finally finish installing the countertop by the late afternoon, but the sink won't be ready tomorrow, still waiting for the plumber to come back and finish the job.

in the late morning my father took my mother to see the doctor, a routine visit to check her blood pressure. afterwards they went on a supply run to the everett costco followed by a visit to bianco and sons to get some chinese sausages.

i was busy at my parents' place mowing the lawn. once that was done, i went around the yard thoroughly watering the plants, since i noticed a lot of the leaves were wilting (my father must not have watered this morning).

i then went to home depot to pick up some epoxy glue and some stainless steel machine screws. the sky was pretty dramatic due to changing weather patterns and i even saw a rainbow cloud. i noticed they were selling a few potted pileas ($10/each), but they were in rough shape.

after returning home, i went about applying the epoxy glue to the broken fan. i superglued the "fin" piece last night and it seemed pretty secure, but to make absolutely sure, i applied a later of epoxy glue onto the cracks to make sure it'd never break again. i got a package of jb weld ($6), it's my first time using epoxy. the one that i got takes longer to set (4-6 hours) and cure (up to 24 hours) but it had the strongest bond, supposedly 5020 psi compared to the quick set version which was only 3127 psi. i mixed the white paste with the black paste to form a grey-colored epoxy glue, then applied it to the fan using a matchstick. it wasn't all that pretty, but nobody will see it anyway, and if it can prevent the "fin" from breaking again, it'd worth it.

my parents came home after dropping off the supplies at the cafe. my father saw the new bag of orchid potting mix and went out into the backyard to repot the new fudingzhu. the growing medium that came with the osmanthus looked remarkably like orchid potting mix, which seems to be just wood chips. the advantage of this medium is remarkably fast drainage. originally we thought about using mulch, but mulch bark is too big and could include chemical additives like fungicide. so we opted for the orchid mix. we were able debating what the blend should be between wood chips and potting soil, but ended up going with mostly wood chips - 80% - with the rest being potting soil and a handful of slow release osmocote fertilizer pellets. we nearly used up the whole bag potting the osmanthus. afterwards when we watered it, it drained almost immediately.

my sister dropped off hailey at my parents' house. ever since she was a puppy, hailey enjoys lounging out in the sun, even though her black fur makes her feel like she's being baked alive. we called her inside but she ignored us so we just let stay outside. eventually she had enough and when i saw her near the steps i let her inside the house.

i was so sweaty from being out in the backyard all day that when i finally came back inside, i decided to take a shower and try out the new shower head. i discovered the old shower head was 2.5gpm; this new one is 1.75gpm so it saves nearly a gallon of water per minute. the old shower head might've had more pressure, but this new head you don't even notice it because of the wider water distribution. my mother took a shower last night but she didn't have anything to say about the new shower head. i'll have to ask my father once he tries it out.

for dinner we had some of my father's fermented japanese red mustard leaves. preserving it this way was the only choice to use up the mustard leaves before they went bad. it tasted a lot like the sour mustard greens we normally eat, except i think those are pickled and not fermented. there was a bit of a medical taste though, which happens when vegetables get over-fermented. my mother also cooked up a chicken stir fry with red peppers, garden thai hot peppers, and some garden thai basil.

i left for cambridge a bit after 7pm. after a shower, i watched the red sox-rays game online from a streaming sports page. boston was trailing and managed to tie it before tampa bay scored a few runs and the red sox never came back.