every night i watch a few episodes of newsradio before going to bed. i actually look forward to sleeping because of newsradio. i'm currently a third way finished with season 4. before getting out of bed this morning, i finished watching an episode from last night. when i arrived in belmont around noontime, i had some pan-fried dumplings for lunch. i mixed some of my chili oil with soy sauce to create a delicious combination.

afterwards my father and i went to the backyard to do some pruning. he reduced the grapevine so it's mostly thick vines with a few smaller ones. we also trimmed the eastern rosebush, the one that hardly ever gets any sun.

while clearing out a refuse bin of snow, i started a rabbit that was hiding in the ivy. it disappeared somewhere in the corner of the yard. when i went in search of more rabbits, i found a large hole dug underneath the northeastern corner of the yard, near the fern patch. i plugged it up with a large rock and some dirt. speaking of digging, i also buried the dead squirrel underneath the young pine tree.

as for the redbuds and flowering cherries, we're going to wait until after they've flowered sometime in may before we prune. we trimmed the hawthorn, made it smaller and more compact. hawthorn branches are dangerous as they contain 2-inch spikes which feels like getting shivved with a toothpick. after that we moved onto the maple tree. compared to the hawthorn, the maple was a snap to prune, no thorns to worry about. there's a lot of maple suckers to trim, we only worked on the eastern side, the rest we'll save for another time. we finished by around 2:30pm.

i checked my aeroponic plants yesterday but i didn't check their roots. i pulled up the net cups to inspect them. the bigger the plants, the more roots they have. some of the roots are long, reaching all the way to the nutrient solution. i can still lift up the net cups, but eventually it'll get to a stage where it'll be impossible do that because the roots will be so thick at that point.

my mother stir-fried some cob-smoked ham with peppers for dinner, along with a pot of beef broth my father had been simmering all day. after dinner i returned home, got back by 8pm.

after a shower i watched the knicks-celtics game. boston needed to atone for their humiliating loss against the brooklyn nets. they managed to get a double digit lead, but the knicks came back to tie it and send the game into overtime. not once, but twice. celtics ended up losing. i don't like that they lost, but at least it was competitive, unlike the nets game, where they just got smoked.

i finished the evening with a watch of the latest the last of us episode (8). out of all the episodes so far, this is my favorite. joel comes back from the dead to become an avenging angel to track down ellie. i'm sorry that there's only one more episode left this season.