i scooped some biotone fertilizer into the newly dug up patch i created on the western side of my plot and planted a strip of large garlic chives. i still have so many left, i've decided i'm going to plant them in the alleyway of my house. it doesn't get a lot of light, but something is better than nothing, and at the very least i knew rabbits won't eat them. the aster in the southwestern corner of my plot needs to be moved. it's too late now, so i have to wait until early next spring to move - and maybe divide - them to the back of my garden.
i dug up a new patch in the southeastern corner of my plot. i picked out the garlic chives and brought them home to clean up. digging them out is a tough job, but needs to be done. i don't know if i'll do it for the rest of the perimeter, but whatever section i can clean up will be an improvement. it also gives me time to think about what else i can plant in my garden.
i soaked the newly dug up garlic chives outside after i got home. i packed up my things and left by 11:20am. i stopped at the cafe to put away the tea eggs and the leftover rice, grab the bag of frozen wings, and water the garlic chive bed.
my mother wasn't home when i got to belmont. i figured she went out for a walk, but my father told me she went with my sister and sister's godmother to kittery maine. they didn't tell me, but my father told them i couldn't go anyway because he needed my help picking up the hybrid hot water heater. my father made me a scallion pancake wrap stuffed with pork floss and some sweet rice porridge. after i finished lunch we went out to run errands.
first stop was ken's auto service on pleasant street in belmont. my father sent in the honda element to get serviced, but the car isn't ready yet, and it's the only vehicle big enough to carry the hybrid hot water heater. the place isn't opened on sundays, but my father wanted to go down and see if it was parked outside, so he could swap it temporarily with our other car and go pick up the water heater. sure enough, when we got there, the car was just parked outside, hadn't been worked on yet. we swapped the car and drove off.
from there we drove to the watertown home depot, where our rheem hybrid hot water heater was waiting. we purchased this at the beginning of may, but it only arrived now. that's because the original order got lost during delivery, and instead of letting me know, i had to contact home depot directly and make new arrangements. the person i spoke with was very nice and helpful though, reordered the item for me at no additional expense (it was even the same sale price). at the store, our associate went to go talk with some people and then basically ignored us. we stood there with no idea what was happening, but later two associates came out with the heater on a flatbed cart.
it didn't seem very heavy, but it was in fact 218 lbs. we were having a hard time getting it into the car, until these two muscle guys came up and saw us in distress. i think as a muscle guy you live for those moments when your strength can be of assistance. one of the guys just basically one handed push the heater into the car.
our home depot visit wasn't over yet though, as we went back inside to get some wooden furring strips to make our new bean trellis. neither the water heater or the wooden planks would fit completely in the car, so we tied up the back hatch the best we could as we drove back home.
i was worried we wouldn't be able to get the water heater out of the car, but getting it out was easier than putting it in. we used a handtruck to wheel it inside the garage. we then went back to the auto mechanic to swap out the car once again, like nothing ever happened.
back at the house we worked on another project: gluing the right rear view mirror back on. the mirror housing is okay, but the plastic frame inside that holds the mirror and motor in place snapped off completely when my father clipped a truck a few weeks ago. the mirror has been held in place with some rubberbands, but the loose mirror keeps on tilting. originally we were going to epoxy the frame in place, but realized it was much easier if we could remove the side mirror housing. all it took was opening a plastic triangle panel inside the door and then removing 3 bolts with a 10mm socket wrench. once the mirror housing was off, it was much easier to work with it inside the house. we mixed our epoxy then glued the frame back in place. instructions said it'd take 15 hours to cure enough so we can use it again. my father will install the mirror back tomorrow morning.
it was mid-afternoon before my father realized we forgot to cook the corned beef. we removed them from the package. there was a sulfurous smell but my father said the beef was still okay, so we put it in the slow cooker on high with some pickling spice. my father cooked some taro glutinous rice balls with old jiuniang my godmother gave us. it tasted a little sour, which probably means the the jiuniang went from sugar to alcohol to vinegar.
out in the backyard, i saw squirrels, chipmunks, and bunnies. we have some white foxgloves this year. i don't remember seeing them last year. i like the white ones, something new from the usual pinks. the peonies have bloomed, and already post-bloom even though the flower buds were still closed last weekend. there's also one solitary lupine flower, escaped getting eaten by rabbits because i protected it with some chickenwire.
we repotted the osmanthus, which we've never repotted since buying it 3-1/2 years ago. osmanthus likes loose acidic soil with good drainage. the old soil contained green fertilizer pellets, wood chips, and some sand. the plant was slightly rootbound, but my father loosed up the roots with a cultivator before we soaked it in a bucket of water to further loosen the rootball. we used miracle-gro potting soil that contains compost and coco coir. we sprinkled some osmocote plus slow release fertilizer pellets. from this one plant we managed to harvest 13 more baby osmanthus via cuttings and rooting hormones. all of them not only managed to produce new leaves, but some also had fragrant flowers.
my father helped me build a bean trellis. i followed the plans from a youtube video. i realized using furring strips made the trellis a little fragile - the guy in the video used much thicker wood scraps. my father was against the idea because he didn't understand how it worked. but we built it anyway, just so he can see it in usage. we made our trellis 6ft tall and 4ft wide. that's actually a bad size because the furring strips are 8ft long each, so we end up using 6 strips just to made one trellis. and we only strung up one string because we realized it'd take forever to string everything, so we might just staple some netting instead.
once we put the trellis into a raised bed did my father finally see the possibilities. future trellises will be 5ft x 3ft - slightly small but we'd only need 4 furring strips to make a trellis. a smaller size would also allow us to put the trellis underneath the wire cages we put up last season in raised bed 1 and 2.
by then it was already 6pm. we were hoping to eat the corned beef, but it'd only been in the slow cooker for 3 hours so it wasn't tender enough. trying to figure out what to have for dinner, that's when my mother came home with fried seafood from kittery. yes it was cold, but we were so hungry we didn't care: crab cakes, fried oysters, fried fish, french fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings.
the wings had been defrosting since this morning. i put them onto a cooling rack and salted both sides before putting them in the fridge to dry marinate. they should be ready for grilling tomorrow.
i returned home afterwards. no NBA games until thursday, so there was nothing good to watch on television. i ended up turning on shooter (2007) on pluto.tv. going to go to bed early, have a supply run tomorrow.