i finally left the community garden by noontime. originally i was going to take the motorcycle directly to belmont, but i went home briefly to collect some seeds before continuing.
i had some lunch when i got to my parents' place, boiled some water in the electric kettle to make some tonkotsu instant noodle, ate while watching some noontime news broadcast.
afterwards i started repairing the bathtub drain. i first covered the chrome drain with blue masking tape, cutting them so they'd cover the curves perfectly. i then mixed the epoxy in a small plastic takeout sauce container. i didn't know much epoxy to use, so i spooned about a teaspoon each of the two compounds. the mixture was gooey at first, but started to hardened while i worked. using the provided wooden popsicle stick, i started scooping the epoxy into the rusty exposed perimeter of the drain. i then used the provided plastic smoothing tool to smooth out the epoxy, like you'd do when working with caulk. because the epoxy was still syrupy, it naturally expanded and slightly filled in the gouged out areas. after i finished filling in the perimeter, i carefully removed the blue tape, exposing the protected chrome drain underneath. i also tried filling in some corroded tub surface nearby with the leftover epoxy, but either the epoxy had already started to harden, or the surface area was too large, for the epoxy to properly fill in, so i quickly removed it with an alcohol-soaked paper towel.
the finished result on the drain looked pretty good. i may touch it up a bit, there's a bit of exposed underlayer on the bottom edge, i just need to make a tiny amount of epoxy. i'll do that within the next day or two, so it can still have time to dry before my parents come home on sunday. the repair kit also comes with two grade of sandpaper, but i don't i need it, the patched areas look smooth enough as is.
it was already 2pm and i wanted to go to the waltham home depot to pick up my order of 7ft u-posts. my sister said she was coming to belmont to wash her blankets but hadn't arrived yet, so i called to ask. as soon as i dialed, i saw my sister's car pull up in front of the house. she arrived with hailey, who chilled out in the backyard, eating grass and lying on the lawn.
i left for the waltham home depot by 2:20pm, took me about 20 minutes to drive there. i returned an unused carbon monoxide detector my sister had bought, before picking up my u-post order. i ordered 4 ($10.28/each), they were surprisingly heavy. after putting them in the car, i went back inside the store to get some ant bait, some drain-o, and another box of deck screws. there was heavy traffic on totten pond road, and i didn't get back to belmont until 3:30pm.
my sister left for a doctor's appointment (while her blanket was drying in the basement), leaving hailey behind with me. i was out in the backyard mowing the lawn. i mowed it last weekend, but the combination of latent fertilizer and an abundance of rain made the grass grow like it was on steroids. the back lawn is definitely better than the front lawn. there are also bare patches (thick of thatch), but just in spots, compared to the front lawn, where almost half of it seems to be dead grass. we'll need to reseed the rest of the front lawn at the end of august.
i emptied out the aeroponics tub. my parents already harvested all the mustard greens before they left. my father transplanted the chinese celeries to a backyard planter. there was still some mustard green stems which i pulled out from the net cups, saving the leca pellets, discarding the rock wool. there was still more than 5 gallons worth of nutrient solution in the tub. i scooped it out into a bucket. the liquid had no smell, looked like water, except when i scooped it into the bucket, it had a brown color. i took a reading with my meters: about pH 6.3 and 970ppm. value-wise, it's still within the optimal range. instead of throwing out the used nutrient solution, i used it as a fertilizer, watering the garlics and the daikon radishes.
it was already 4:40pm and i decided to fly the drone into the air to take some photos. from the sky it's very obvious the different between our front lawn and our back lawn. during springtime, when trees are leaving out, there's a myriad of green shades. by summertime it'll just be a uniform green, but now's still a good time for tree identification. from the air i also inspected our lilac bush. because of careful pruning, we hardly got any flowers last season, but this year the lilac bush looks like a light purple cloud with hundreds of fragrant blooms. the scent makes working in the backyard a pleasant experience.
my sister finally came back around 6pm. she left with hailey.
only then did i finally start planting the seedlings, after first strategizing where they should go. usually it's something my father and i do together, but since my parents are in europe, it's up to me to decide where the plants will go. first, i tilled the strip of garden area in the southern bed and planted about 60 long bean seeds, before covering them up with protective chicken wire. this is just to prevent squirrels from digging up the seeds, but once the seeds germinate, we'll need another strategy, because we did the same thing last year, and rabbits will eventually eat the bean seedlings once they grow out of the chicken wire. in RB0 i planted 2 hyacinth beans in the back corners, and 2 buttercup squashes in the middle region. in RB1 and RB2 it was the same strategy: beans in the back, squash in the middle. in those two beds, the beans were an alternating series of blue beans and long beans. RB3 i planted two bitter melons. RB4, just a back row of alternating blue and long beans. finally, in the western bed, i planted the remaining bitter melons (8-9) and two squashes. i didn't finish planting until 8pm, when it was already dark and i could barely see anymore.
i finally left belmont by 8:30pm, after setting up two more smart plugs to add some lights on a schedule so it looks like somebody's home. the temperature was dropping and i was only dressed in a t-shirt. i got a text from jeff, who finally moved in this evening. when i got home, i saw my blinds were still open but the automatic light had turned on. i turned off the light remotely with my phone before going into the house.
first thing i did was to throw a frozen chicken alfredo meal into the oven before hopping into the shower. i watched the end of the knicks-heat game, miami beat new york 109-101, to take a 3-1 lead in the series. after that it was the warriors-lakers game. lakers won 104-101, taking a 3-1 series lead.