more plantings: 4 heirloom tomatoes 'mortgage lifter' and 8 snapdragons 'fordhook tall mix'. assuming all my other tomatoes germinate, i have way more tomatoes than i need. these heirloom tomatoes are of the beefsteak variety, 2+ lbs. each, not even sure why i got them. but tomatoes in the garden is just a summer tradition, and each plant can produce a lot so it sort of pays for itself (provided you actually like tomatoes). i didn't plant any roma tomatoes this season. that was one of the new varieties i tried back in 2013, but i left for china before i got a chance to get any fruits. in hindsight, instead of the beefsteaks, i should've gotten some roma tomatoes instead.

i'm almost out of planting pots, now i'm thinking about which seeds i should sow outdoors instead of starting them indoors. cucumbers and squashes are sown outside. i also have some cucumelons, those i may start indoors at the end of april or the beginning of may, so by the time i transplant them it will be nice and warm outside (june). there are also some flowers - more snapdragons, some zinnias - which i may also sow outside.

in the afternoon i went to the newly relocated union square post office. compared to the old location - inside a palatial colonial revival building from the 1930's with a nice WPA mural of revolutionary america - this was a tiny nondescript place with not even enough space to form a proper waiting line. but it wasn't busy and i was able to just walk up to the counter and ask one of the clerks to price a thick piece of mail i was sending to china. it was a birthday card for sunmeng; although her birthday isn't until the end of april, with the slow speed of international mail to china, it will take about 3 weeks to arrive, so i have to plan ahead. i had the package priced so i could put on my own stamps, including some chinese new year stamps (even though CNY is already over).

coming back, i stopped at market basket to get some groceries, including ingredients i needed to make a hearty mixed bean soup ( i have the beans and the bacon, just needed an onion and some crushed tomato). i also got some junk food; i've been avoiding carbohydrates but there's still plenty of unhealthy yet delicious things to eat, like a bag of spicy pork rinds that i emptied as soon as i got home. at least i was being construction: added a paypal donation button to the AFBHS website. still got a few more bugs to fix.

i also walked to the community garden to check out the available plots this year. there was only maybe 1 or 2 plots worth switching to. my own plot looked very barren. whomever was using it on loan last season didn't do too much (for good reason, since they knew i'd be back to reclaim my garden). even my old tomato cages were still there, although the wire mesh trellis stapled to the fence had seen better days. i was happy to see the garlic chives i planted in the summer of 2012 had finally flowered from the dried husks. i really did miss 2 seasons of gardening due to my yearlong stay in china. i want to get a different plot just to escape the falling mulberries everywhere. i think i've had this plot for a decade now, since 2005.

at 7:00 there was the community garden meeting at the agassiz-baldwin community center. i normally skip the meeting because they can get a bit long, but i was there tonight to participate in the plot lottery drawing. i spoke with anne-marie who told me that they actually trimmed the mulberry again last year, so now there's even less branches overhanging onto my plot. that made me decide to keep my preexisting plot. it's not a bad plot, gets a decent amount of sunlight. it means i don't have to dig out any of my perennials. it's actually a little bigger than the typical plot too, more rectangular instead of square.

the meeting wasn't that long, ended by 8:20 because i wasn't doing the plot lottery. when i got home i made some annie's white cheddar shells plus some spinach. i watched izombie as i ate. afterwards i watched about an hour of going clear, the new scientology expose on HBO.