when i woke up this morning around 9am, first thing i did was to a load of laundry, washing the bedsheets as well. i sniffed around the bare mattress but couldn't detect any urine smell, so i think i'm safe.
i called my mother asking her what she needed from market basket. since i had the car, i could pick up supplies from the somerville market, saving my parents a trip. i left before 10am, got back 30 minutes later. one thing they needed was ground pork with sausage consistency. this is a special item and we have to ring the butcher department to have them grind the pork for us. a butcher came out and said they didn't have the proper equipment today to grind for sausage, only regular. i still bought the pork butts, my mother said my father could chop them manually.
i returned home briefly to take my laundry out of the dryer and put the bedsheets on the bed. i left by 11am, stopping first at the cafe to drop off the supplies. while there i saw a small crowd of people looking up at something. it was a red-tailed hawk perched on a power line after being mobbed by bluejays. i parked the car and grabbed my telephoto lens to take some photos. after finishing with the cafe i continued to belmont. my mother was already making lunch, pan-fried some dumplings, but managed to scorch them.
i convinced my father to get the t-fal EZ clean deep fryer. our originally plan was to do a trial run with our existing presto deep fryer. but the presto fry basket is so small, we could only fry a single chicken piece at a time. plus it doesn't have the auto-filtration feature like the t-fal, so the cooking oil we use would be tainted, plus we'd need to filter the oil manually. by getting the t-fal (which we were already thinking about doing) we can start using it now. and for some reason there was a $10 off coupon for that model, so we ended up paying $120 (before taxes).
in the early afternoon, my father and i were out in the backyard doing yard work, while my mother went out for a walk. i pulled most plants from RB0, leaving just a few hollyhocks, garlics, and the roots of hyacinth beans. i relocated the nasturtiums to the southern bed, not sure if they'll survive, but i was ready to toss them out anyway, so if they live it'll be a bonus. i relocated 2 thai basil plants to RB3. and 2 small peppers that i planted in late summer that still haven't flowered yet i put them into small pots, maybe keep them alive during the winter. i tilled the soil a bit with a bow rake, got it ready for some fall planting.
my father was busy collecting blue bean seed pods. i learned that waiting for the pods to dry is a bad enough, because it's been so wet, they'll get moldy. best time to harvest the pods for seeds is when they get mottled with purplish brown spots. last year we barely got any blue seeds; this year we have a bumper crop with mostly blue seeds. seeds so big sometimes they're bursting out of their skin (not sure if those are still viable).
i noticed the water level in the rain barrels had decreased again (all barrels only midway filled), which made me think there was another leak somewhere. we tested the long garden hose connecting the sunroom barrels to the one behind the garage by connecting the hose to the faucet and turning it on to see if there were any leaks. that hose passed the test. later i tested the hose connecting the bedroom corner rain barrel to the 3 in front of the house near my old bedroom. that hose all passed the test. the only hose i didn't test was the one from the barrels in front of the living room to the one behind the garage. but that one would be the least likely to leak because yesterday those front rain barrels had more water than the other barrels when we had the water gauge leak. my father thinks we didn't get as much rain as we thought, and the barrels just seem empty because they had time to equalize. we'll know for sure after a few days, when it stops raining, to see if we still have water in the barrels.
we went back inside once it began to rain. i did notice rain was coming from the downspouts, but not in torrents, but rather just trickles. so maybe the barrels didn't all fill up yesterday.
in the mid-afternoon my father grilled some buffalo wings because my mother said she wanted to eat some. they were okay, but i ate one without sauce and it tasted a little fishy. later i had to rush to the bathroom with a quick case of diarrhea, i blame the chicken.
li contacted me about looking for a place to stay for 1-1/2 weeks in october, when he and his wife will be in town for an astrophysicist conference. i told him he can either stay at the apartment above my sister's place, or stay at my place. if he stayed at my place, i would temporarily move into the guest bedroom so he and his wife can have the bigger room.
i broke the plastic handle of a pair of scissors. so i used some clear JB weld epoxy to glue the handle back. not sure if it'll hold, it'll need a few days to cure properly.
i repotted the crowded pennyworts, splitting them into 3 pots. i use soaked sphagnum moss as the main substrate, but added a handful of compost at the bottom for nutrients. a few broken stems i'm taking home possibility to propagate in water.
right before dinner i was out the rain sowing some red japanese mustard and cilantro seeds into RB0. next weekend i'll plant some daikon seeds into one of the other raised beds and chinese celery seeds into the long planters.
for dinner my father grilled some more mackerels. he splashed some chinese baijiu onto the fish hoping to remove some of the fishy taste, but ended up making them taste like baijiu. he also added some chinese sausages into the rice, but didn't realize they had expired and were rancid, so the rice had a rancid taste as well. my mother made some steamed egg with pork.
my father gave me a ride back to cambridge, i got back by 7pm. i had a temu order waiting on the doorstep. in the package was: aquarium filter sponge, plant pots, foam cover for aquarium filter intake tube, white window insulation, silica gel packets, glass CO2 checker. i knew the pots would be flimsy, but i didn't realize how small they were. i was going to use them for my pilea transplants. the box for the CO2 checker was crushed. the checker itself was fine, but there's some minor abrasion marks on the glass. i cut the white aquarium filter sponge down to size and put two pieces into my hang-on-back filter. i took out the activated carbon sock because i read most aquariums don't need that type of chemical filtration. besides, i was afraid it was filtering out the plant fertilizer i've been adding. these new filter sponge are just for mechanical filtration, a finer level of filtering compared to the coarse sponge below.
close to midnight i started working on making my own DIY CO2 indicator solution. the trick is to dilute some baking soda in distilled water so it had a concentration of 4dKH. i weighed out 1000ml of distilled water. to that i added 1.20g of baking soda, making a 40dKH solution. i then transferred 50ml of 40dKH solution to 450ml of distilled water, which in theory should give me a 4dKH solution. unfortunately when i checked with the KH tester, it said i had a 6dKH solution. i figured it was within the margin of error, or that i had contaminants. so i filled the CO2 checker with 5ml of "4dKH" solution and added 6 drops of pH indicator. i installed it in the aquarium, hoping to see some color changes tomorrow (blue is low CO2, green is good, yellow is high CO2).