there was a very light drizzle as i rode to my parents' place. i was worried it might get worse, but i made it to belmont with just a few wet drops on my pants.
i spent an hour in the backyard, documenting all the emerging plants. cucumber beetles have chewed some squash leaves, but they're impervious to the bacterial wilt that they spread normally to cucumbers. the single surviving dragon fruit cactus has started to form some new buds; these will grow to become new branches of the cactus, but we're not expecting to see any flowers (therefore no fruits). the wet weather and dappled sunshine has worked miracles on the houseplants currently living outside underneath the maple tree. many of the pileas have flowered, not sure if that's a sign of health or stress, but the leaves all look very healthy. 3 orchid plants have produced flower stalks with buds, including the severely damaged purple-leaf orchid my godmother gave us last year. creeping jade plant is doing well. likewise the wandering jews have never looked better.
i went with my mother for a walk around 11am. we brought unbrellas knowing it'd rain. we walked to cushing square and back, via the reservoir. the town hasn't mowed the grass on the reservoir, and an abundance of blue chicory have emerged. likewise with all the recent rain, there were plenty of wild mushroom sightings. i found a mullein growing along the sidewalk, which i recently learned can be used as toilet paper. i also spotted 2 tulip trees. close to cushing square, we saw a garden filled with gooseneck loosestrifes, like bushy white tails.
when we got back around noon, my mother made some noodles for lunch with a daikon broth she'd been slow simmering since the morning.
i had to clean the electric mouse trap after it'd been flashing for nobody knows how many days. i knew it was bad when i picked up the trap and could smell the odor of something rotting - like shellfish that'd be left in a bag outside for days, that's what it smelled like. i took the trap outside and opened it. inside was a dead mouse, but it didn't look so bad, i was expecting a lot worse. it looked like a fresh kill, and after dumping the body in a hole, i noticed some fur had detached inside the trap. i then spent some agonizing minutes rinsing out the trap in the sink. i used alcohol to get rid of the smell but that didn't work. i used an old toothbrush and some dish soap and scrubbed the inside but the smell still lingers. i did the best i could, but then the rest of the day i kept smelling that awful decomposition smell.
my father and i were outside organizing raised bed 1. he pulled up a bunch of bolted cilantro and mustard plants and sorted through the pile to see what we could keep. we stumbled across an ant colony hiding alongside rb1, as a swarm of angry ants came out, biting us on the foot. wasn't that painful, like tiny pricks, more of a nuisance. i cut the round hardware cloth tower in half so i could protect some additional plants with the other half, including a zucchini plant in rb3. the rain started to pick up so we went back inside.
i came back out in the late afternoon to do some more garden surveying. i've seen some female bitter melon flowers but so far no growing melons yet. last year it took us until mid-july to get plam-length bitter melons. in our raised bed trellises, magenta-colored hyacinth beans and long bean flowers dominate. nevertheless, i haven't seen any long beans yet, but i didn't see a blue bean pod (i think blue bean flowers look similar to long beans).
we tried ordering online subs for dinner from michael's pizza, but i tried two different systems and none of them worked, which made me think michael's is currently closed for the 4th of july holiday. so instead we ended up getting whoppers from burger king, the cheapest meal for the buck.
i returned home around 7pm, hoping to beat another round of torrential rain heading in our direction. along the way i saw some high velocity floor fans some neighbor had tossed out. after parking my motorcycle, i went back to investigate, and grabbed two fans (there were others but i could only carry two). my father likes restoring broken fans - there hasn't been a fan he couldn't fix - and i figured he might to try his hand with these. they don't look broken, but were sitting out in the rain all the day. i put them in the basement for the time being.
lauryn was home, but i didn't see her the rest of the evening. she cooked - i could smell it - but it wasn't frying, so it wasn't too bad. i did crack a few windows and put in the fan to aerate out the house, before it started raining and i had to shut the windows. normally she showers around 9pm but today she didn't shower until 9:40pm.
i finished watching the diplomat. 10 episodes not enough, i'm already wishing i could see season 2. so the big reveal turns out be the british prime minister ordered a secret strike on his own aircraft carrier in order to create a false flag attack to unite the country and drum up political points for himself.