i left for belmont around 11:30am. for lunch my mother made wonton soup. afterwards we went for a walk. it was cool, but a light jacket kept me warm. it was an overcast day, with more spring flowers to see. tulips are now appearing, those that survived the rabbit onslaught anyway. more bushes and trees are flowering, and i saw quince, dogwood, magnolia, viburnum, flowering cherries, and rhododendrons. a neighbor had creeping speedwell growing a rock garden. i'm surprised these flowers are actually perennials. spotted a plant i'd never seen before: spring snowflakes. or they could be summer snowflakes, which actually bloom in the spring as well, and are taller than the spring versions. the flowers remind me of lily-of-the-valley, with a green dot on each petal.
we went up trapelo road, then to common, before returning via washington. i hadn't been up in those parts of belmont for a while, the familiar streets reminded me of addresses of former classmates, i wonder if any of them are still living in their old homes. we went out around 1pm and came back an hour later.
one of the houses on our street was having an open house, but it was already finished by the time we got back. it was bought by the listing real estate company as a flip property, purchased for $1.25 million back in july. during the winter they used the front yard as a parking lot for a fleet of jeeps, before they started renovating the house over the past month. listed just a few days ago, the new asking price is $1.69 million. to be honest, that house is not worth a million. despite all the work done, a new owner could very well just purchase the house then tear it all down to build a new one.
my father reconfigured the rain barrel connections so that the catch barrel now diverts to 2 separate barrels, while a third barrel gets fed from the front barrels by the garage. it's a little complicated and not sure how it'll all work, but we won't know anyway since it doesn't look like it's going to rain this weekend. initially we were forecasted to receive about an inch of rain, but now we're lucky to get a tenth of an inch.
my father and i also built a segment of rabbit fencing for the raised beds. we used the old wooden picnic table, the one with the rotten missing seat. it'd been piled with pieces of maple logs and stacks of wire fencing material that i had to clean up first. while i was doing that i also discovered a dead squirrel by the compost bin. it'd been dead for a while, all its fur had fallen off. i buried it underneath the pussy willow tree.
using 8ft-long 1x2" furring strips, each fence segment is 4x2ft. originally we were going to staple the chicken wire to the other side of the wooden frame, but i thought that'd look bad, and it'd be better to have the fencing on the same side of the 3" wooden segments we screwed into each corner to hold the frame in place.
so we learned a few things: while the fence segment is 4ft long, the vertical pieces are slightly shorter than 2ft, in order to take into account the thickness of the horizontal pieces. we cut each vertical pieces 22.5" long, which gave us 6" of remaining material to make into 2 3" corner pieces. we started by stapling the chicken wire to one end of the vertical piece, before rolling out the chicken wires across the frame. bear in mind the frame at this point is still free moving furring strips. as we roll out the chicken wire, we staple it to the wooden frame, until we reach the other end of the frame. once that was done, we used the corner braces to secure the chicken wire to the frame but also to hold the frame in place. drilling into the first corner piece, the wood split immediately. that's how we realized we had to pre-drill some holes into the corner braces before screwing them in. originally i thought we'd need 4 screws per corner, but just 2 screws was more than enough to secure the frame. corner braces don't need to be too big, and my father was able to reuse the split wood in one of the corners.
we stopped after we built our first fence piece, as it was getting late. my father did cut the remaining pieces of furring strips, so we had all the wood ready for when we do finally assemble the remaining fencing. i got to use my drafting square, which came in handy marking lines on the furring strips. we also realized we had old furring strips in the backyard that we used as stakes, so my father cut those into 3" segments to be used as corner braces.
to completely protect a 8x4ft raised bed, we need 6 4ft-long fence segment. that uses 9 8ft furring strips. that left us with just 6 pieces, which is enough to make 4 4ft-long fence segments, but not enough to completely surround a raised bed. that means we need to go to home depot and get another bundle of 15 strips. that's not including the corner braces, which we were lucky that we can use spare wood, but if you're making them new, you need to take that into consideration. there's also the chicken wire. we bought 2 rolls of 2x25ft chicken wire. a single raised bed uses 24ft of fencing wire, so basically a single roll per bed. we also need to get more chicken wire.
i checked my 2nd aunt's progress, looked like she's sailing from slovenia to venice italy. she's far enough away from land (6 miles) to not be able to see nothing but sea on the horizon so her signal was dead. either that or she accidentally shut down her phone, which is something she does frequently.
my parents made some chicken feet. when they were done i tried one and found them to be salty but flavorful. we didn't use the spicy stirfry sauce we normally use, but instead used a dried spice packet designed for marinating chicken feet. i already ate 3 before my mother diluted the chicken feet with water before pouring out all the sauce. after that the chicken feet tasted bland.
for dinner my mother stir-fried some asparagus with leftover tripe. we also have leftover xuelihong mustard greens.
i went home around 7pm, hurrying back to cambridge so i could watch the second half of the heat-bucks game. heat ended up winning 130-117, after giannis left the game early after falling hard on his back. i expect to see him play in the next game though, it didn't seem that serious. the heat suffered a more serious injury though, when tyler herro fell and broke his right hand before the half. he was wincing the whole time, but for some reason he couldn't sub out, and even tried to shoot a bucket with the broken hand. the way he was tangling it though, in hindsight it seemed pretty obvious it was broken. herro is a valuable component of the heat's offense, and averages 20 points a game, so other players will need to step up. the way they played tonight though, they seemed to have plenty of offensive firepower. i'm rooting for the heat in this series. lots of pundits are saying miami will lose, but after the celtics faced off against them into a game 7 last year, i would never bet against the heat.
i watered the plants in my grow closet tonight, first time since they germinated. one of the independence day tomatoes has finally sprouted. they seem to be late bloomers, still waiting for the other 3. all my thai basils (3) have germinated as well. still waiting on the malva and hot peppers. only half of my blue beans sprouted, i may have to reseed. i'll need to dig in the soil to see if the current seeds are viable or not. i'm so low on space in my closet, i'm seriously thinking about moving out some more boxes so i can expand. i had to raised the led strip lights on the topmost shelves, as the beans are growing too fast and too tall that they're about to hit the lights.