i was going to ignore the mosquito and go back to sleep, but felt another bite on the back of my arm. so i turned on the light on looked around for the mosquito. it didn't take long to see it on the wall by my pillow. i slapped at it thinking i hit it, but a few seconds later saw another mosquito (the same one?). i slapped that one as well, leaving a bloody smear on my palm.
i felt better afterwards, but the experience left me paranoid that there was still more in the room. i continued slapping any little itch on my body, afraid it might be another mosquito. goes without saying i couldn't fall back asleep. i finally fell unconscious around 8:30am, and didn't get up until 10:30am.
as there was nothing planned today, i didn't get to belmont until noontime. i set the gopro on a time lapse (4K 1s wide), so i can do a time lapse vs timewarp comparison test later. shooting 4K doesn't given me a 16:9 wide screen aspect ratio, but it does gave me the most coverage as the video is in its native 4:3 aspect ratio (at 16:9 the top and bottom of the video actually gets cropped). i stopped midway to check on a wire drying rack (it wasn't in very good shape so i didn't take it, probably wouldn't be able to anyway on a motorcycle).
my parents had already gone out for a walk this morning. they went back to the lotus pond. my mother said there was nobody there, as all the lotus flowers have finished blooming anyway. there also weren't any herons. they did find more golf balls, two whites and a yellow. coming back, they went across the street to burger king to get some breakfast. my mother got a ham & cheese croissant sandwich, ate all the ham & cheese, left me the croissant. thankfully none of them ate their hash browns so i was able to have all of those.
my father was making some more solar connecting cables. he replaced the stereo speaker wires with some black and red solar connection cables we bought a while back. these cables we used to connect our old flexible solar panel to the 35Ah sealed battery in the basement. not sure how much we paid for these, but they were relatively inexpensive. later we learned the reason why: these are CCA cables - copper clad aluminum - the lowest of wire grades. will they still work? definitely. but they don't carry current as well as pure copper, which is what we got with the 12 gauge landscape wires.
he set up two portable lithium battery charging station: one from the dining room, where he had our latest 100W solar panel placed in the middle of the lawn for maximum sun exposure; the second one from the bedroom, where the panel sits on wooden planks above the railing of the basement entrance.
i was busy outside pulling up ground ivy, which seemed to have taken root in the western bed. it wasn't so bad when it was just in the tomato plot, but has since started to grow onto the lawn, so i pulled up as much as i can. after that i trimmed the quince bush, which has now grown to a monster size. we forgot to trim back in late spring after it finished blooming, but it hardly bloomed at all because of the summer drought and winter warmth, so that's probably why we forgot to prune it. you have to be careful with quince bushes as they have long thorns (though not as long as hawthorn). while pruning, i was leaning against a ladder railing, and managed to crack my glass screen protector. it's been a while since i last cracked the screen (since february according to my record), must be a new record.
my mother came out to take a break from watching her korean dramas to harvest some bitter melons. she found a massive one that was hiding in the vines. there was another large fruit but it had already turned orange and spilled its red seeds.
squash growing season looks to be over for us. numerous leaves have succumbed to downy mildew despite my spraying. all i wasn't quite able to catch all the squash vine borer eggs and a few seemed to have damaged some of the thicker vines. the danger with growing squash on trellises is all it takes is one vine borer to destroy an entire plant. finally, the hanging buttercup squashes themselves have turned an opaque color, which means they're ready for harvesting.
we called my mother out to give her the honor of cut down all the squashes we've been growing this past summer. my parents have already been harvesting squashes already (6-7 maybe?) but we were taking them all down today. i gave my mother a pair of pruning shearers but a simple pair of scissors worked just as well cutting through the thick stems. we harvested 9, with 2 more already inside. there's also two squash plants in the western bed, growing over the honeysuckle vines. there's at least one more mature squash fruit, but we're letting it mature more on the vine as it's not in the way of anything.
i watered the garden, noticing that a rabbit has already eaten one pepper, a bunch of hollyhocks, and a few bean plants in RB0 - the only unprotected bed. i've seen this rabbit hanging out in the backyard but have been unable to find out how it came in or how to drive it out. despite the glitter foil, birds have been pecking at our purple reliant grapes. i picked up a few off the ground, shared them with my father. they're not as sour anymore, maybe even a hint of sweetness, and surprisingly seedless. we still have a bunch of green concord grapes, but those are not good eating grapes (maybe i'll make jelly out of them, if they can manage to reach maturity before critters eat them all). my father was also cutting down all the squash vines (RB0, RB1, RB2) now that we harvested all the fruits.
i looked for the monarch caterpillar i saw last weekend, hiding underneath the milk crate were the potted milkweed sits on. i thought maybe it hid to turn into a chrysalis, but i found no sign of the caterpillar. i read online that some caterpillars will travel 15-20 feet away from the milkweed in order to pupate. i'll just have to keep looking, but have faith that the monarch is safe somewhere in the backyard, regardless if i find it or not.
our cashmere hops are doing very well! many large hop cones for harvesting! this is our 3rd season growing them. they weren't this large last year. in early september 2023, they were about the size of tiny raspberries. this year, the cones are as big as a jumbo green grape. my father picked off a few to make a tea. we don't make craft beers so we have no use for the hops otherwise.
around 3pm my father grilled some buffalo wings. i thought they were uncooked, and ate a large drumstick that tasted raw (chewy). i finished it anyway, didn't want to risk my parents eating raw chicken. my mother also opened her container of gopi mango lassi. i liked it, but it's much sweeter than traditional lassi, and barely any hint of that yogurt sourness.
for dinner my mother made some fried rice.
i returned home at 7pm, setting up the gopro to take another video, this time a timewarp (4K auto wide). once i got back home, i checked out the two movies. initially i thought the timewarp looked better, because it stabilized my body. but it did nothing for my head, which was blurry at times because i was moving around. also the background blew by so fast, it was hard to pick out where i was. the video file was only 283MB with a duration of just 23 seconds. compares to the time lapse video i took this morning, that file was 1.7GB with a 2:17 duration. there was no stabilization, but the time lapse looked smoother simply because it had more frames. backgrounds were easy to follow, i knew exactly where i was. another advantage of time lapse is the wide angle is wider than time warp (time warp has to crop in order to compensation for stabilization). so looks like time lapse is the clear winner for selfie motorcycle videos. i might be able to reduce the file size by using a frame rate of every 2 seconds, but 1 second looks much better. next time i'm going to shot another timewarp, but using a manual speed of 10x to see if it improves the quality.
after a shower i ate the last of my watermelon. i still can't seem to get enough, i'm going to buy another one next week, whether that's from market basket or chinatown.