it wasn't even 9am yet but already there were groups of people digging up free compost. last year cambridge held its free compost giveaway at squirrel brand park, but they changed venue this year. my sister and i came prepared, with our buckets and handtruck. many others seemed like it was there first time. they brought buckets and bags and tubs, but how were they going to carry all that heavy compost home? i filled up our containers while my sister wheeled one of the 10 gallon rubber tub back to the car (in hindsight we should've parked closer, but i wasn't sure if there was anymore parking; turns out there was plenty). i bumped into helen, whom i saw at the free compost giveaway last spring.
i dropped my sister off by 9:20am, helping her unload her share of compost. i then drove to belmont to drop off the car and compost. i put the compost in the garage for the time being, to keep them out of the rain. i had about an hour before i had to return to the cafe for work, so i decided to stay in belmont. my parents weren't home because my father drove my mother to a brookline haircut appointment. i left by 10:20am.
when i got to the cafe, i installed the temu-purchased clip-on rearview mirror to the cabinet in front of the cafe, so when we're preparing drinks, we can still see the customers behind us. my parents showed up; i was expecting my father but having my mother here was a surprise.
i didn't believe it when my father said there was something wrong with the data on his new pixel 6 phone. but i noticed he'd periodically disappear from google map tracking, and when i checked in phone again, i found the answer: apparently it was set to eSIM, and not set to the physical SIM in his phone. once i turned that on, he started getting data again.
customers started arriving before we even officially opened. we had people sitting out on the back deck even though temperature was in the lower 50's and a cold overcast (i think the reason was because they had a dog with them). there was a period where it got really busy, multiple orders left and right, but i actually don't it, makes the time go by faster, and it's kind of exciting seeing just how many orders we can keep track of before the wheels come off. during a lull, i tried my marmalade on some english muffin with butter. it was okay, but not something i'd eat everyday. my father said he liked the bitterness rather than the tartness (in which this marmalade doesn't have any, compared to something like quince jelly). later in the afternoon i made a batch of tea eggs for next week (giving them a few days to steep makes them taste better).
4pm came quickly. we cleaned up for the weekend, my parents took home a bunch of leftovers. i left for belmont early, got to the house around 4:30pm before my parents.
my father harvested some more mustard greens for dinner. we're going to finish them over the weekend so i can start a new batch of seeds. my father was thinking more chinese celery with scallions, two vegetables we use often. cilantro would be another good candidate, we never seem to have enough of it, and they don't keep very well in the fridge. once the weather is warm enough for the jasmines to move out, i'll move the aeroponic setup down to the basement and grow cool season vegetables indoors in the cool basement. my basement grow lights (as opposed to the strip lights) are much more powerful so the plants will do even better (though currently they also get portion of natural sunlight in the sunroom). i noticed the spanish (?) lavender are starting to blossom, and my starter pack cell-grown chinese celeries have all germinated as well (none of the celeries i planted outside have yet to sprout). transplanted spiderworts are also doing well, they startd to grow upright in the soil instead of dropping downwards. those little pots i put them in might not be big enough, probably in a few months i'll need to transplant them again.
our SMA-UHF adapters and SMA-antenna mounts finally arrived from aliexpress. the antenna mounts had the wrong connectors on both ends. this is something we learned, but apparently sma connectors are more than just male and female, they also have reverse polarity variants with either internal or external threads. hard to keep track of what's what. in the end we figured out a solution by buying some additional SMA-SMA adapters. the bases are also supposed to be magnetic, but one of them has a strong magnet while the other has a weak one. i'd love to return them but the price of return shipping alone would be more than the items. as for the SMA-UHF adapters, originally my father though they too were wrong, until i showed him it was exactly what we wanted, a way to easily attach a baofeng handheld radio to our larger chimney mounted antenna which is a UHF-plug.
for dinner my mother stir-fried the mustard greens. both my parents repeatedly gushed over how tender the vegetables were, though i didn't really notice a difference, other than they were crunchier and easier to chew. we also had some sour bamboo shoots with spareribs, which my parents had been slow cooking at the cafe all day before bringing it home.
i left around 7:45pm. the forecast said rain wouldn't arrive until after midnight, but it was already misting. not enough to get soaked, but enough to feel damp and cold, and make it hard to see through my glasses.
after a shower i settled in to watch some NBA playoff games. heat demolished the giannis-free bucks 121-99, but jimmy butler might be hurt, and victor oladipo looks to be down for the season with a blown knee. could miami actually knockout milwaukee? might be tough with so many key players injured or out, but definitely something i'd like to see.