after getting home i took a shower. i admired the caulking job i did last night, the bathroom felt brand new somehow. i showed up at the cafe by 11:30am, bringing with me some hoisin sauce my mother called to ask for. i also brought the temu spade connectors and scissors. the scissors turned out to be a cheap version with plastic handles that could break. i thought they were taiwanese-style all-metal scissors.
my sister showed up unexpectedly, after putting esmei in her crate to sleep. the vet told her yesterday - judging from teeth measurements - that esmei might be 11-12 weeks old, not 10 weeks. my sister helped briefly when we got busy, but kept worrying about her dog, and the fact that she didn't set up the webcam so we could monitor esmei remotely. so she went back home to turn on the webcam. she came back later, taking esmei on a walk after she's gotten all her shots.
i went to my sister's place an hour later to help her staple some chicken wire in her backyard to prevent esmei was sneaking out or falling off the railing. esmei was busy chewing on wood mulch and sage stems. back inside the house, my sister showed me how esmei learned to climb over a box she used to block her from leaving the living room.
as it wasn't busy, i left the cafe by 3pm. i rode directly to the community garden to prune back all the goldenrod maureen had been complaining about. i noticed my monkshood have bloomed. i was also there to collect a bag of hyacinth beans. there are so many, i could easy harvest another bag, and still have enough beans leftover to collect seeds for next season. i did suffer some mosquito bites though, likewise when i was in my sister's backyard. i used to rarely get bitten, but in recent years i seem to get bit whenever i set foot anywhere in a backyard or a garden.
afterwards i took a tour of the community garden, admiring other people's flowers. i noticed lynn had some purple beans as well, but they were smaller and flatter, and just a few. she did have nice nasturtium bushes. elsewhere, another gardener had some monkshood as well, but not as many as i did. i finally biked back home by 4pm.
i went to star market briefly to grab some chips ($2/bag) and clementines ($3/bag). my 2nd aunt was in chinatown today and picked up some supplies, sparing me from having to go tomorrow morning, which means i can sleep late.
the days are getting darker sooner now, i closed the blinds by 6pm. lounging on the couch, i promptly fell asleep, waking up an hour later. i took a shower, plunged the clogged drain, before finally making dinner, another pair of pita pockets. i tried a few clementines, they're pretty sweet, i'll bring a bag to my mother tomorrow morning, along with the hyacinth beans.
breaking news tonight other than the 24/7 israel-hamas coverage (as israel continues to bombing gaza) is the announcement that steve scalise was dropping out of the speaker's race after not being able to secure enough votes within his party. the other candidate is jim jordan, who has even less of a change. republicans need to find a new candidate, or - god forbid - work across the aisle with conservative/moderate democrats to help secure the necessary votes.