my father dropped off the box of columbine/hollyhock seedlings in my backyard this morning. i didn't even know he did that until i was making lunch and saw the box on my porch. afterwards i went down to the community garden to transplant them. the columbines i started from seeds in late winter, stratifying them outdoors for many months. they really require a lot of patience because by mid-spring they still had sprouted yet. but once they did, they can up pretty well. they're super hardy, as well as they should since they're high elevation plants, taking lapses in watering like champs and handling flooding equally well. the seedlings are tough, the stem is almost woody given the amount of mishandling they can handle. as for the hollyhocks, they're actually naturally sown seedlings from my parents' backyard.

of course i picked the worst time to be the garden, in the middle of the day, with the sun beating down and the temperature at 88°. maybe that's why there was nobody else. by the end i had sweat streaming down my face into my eyes, all over my glasses, t-shirt soaked on both sleeves from wiping.

the very first thing i noticed in my garden were the few spots of color from the blossoming delphiniums. besides the typical purple, there was also a pale violet variant.

i planted my flower seedlings, plugging them into any available space on the eastern half of my garden plot. the only thing i'm worried about is once the mulberries start falling, whether or not these tiny seedlings will get squashed in the process.

i was there in the garden until 2:40, more than an hour. i was there longer than usual because i bumped into jeff and we got to chatting. coming back, i bumped into ed returning from a boston ride on his newly restored 1990's kawasaki ninja motorcycle and get sucked into another long conversation.

i took the motorcycle to city paint in north cambridge to see if i can get a small sample jar of cabot wood stain to cover the nail heads. it was an unpleasant ride getting there, traveling down a stretch of mass ave, with the sun beating down my back (it actually felt sunburnt). turns out it was for naught, since they didn't carry any sizes smaller than a pint, and even those they didn't have anymore. the guy working there at least gave me a business card to their main store in arlington and told me i could try calling to see if they carried it.

early this morning wangyang contacted me to 1) let me know that she got her US visa (in part thanks to my invitation letter), and 2) she'd be shipping off to venezuela on wednesday for a lengthy tour of duty there as their logistics supervisor. she was in chengdu for the time being on vacation.

not sure what it is, but i've been getting into these early evening naps. i fell asleep around 6:30, waking up an hour later to close the blinds. for dinner i heated up a can of clam chowder, sprinkled with plenty of (stale) oyster crackers. i watched game 4 of the NBA finals, golden state warriors won tonight on their high speed offense. cleveland had their chances, but the balls just were falling in their favor tonight. lebron james suffered a nasty gash on top of his head when he fell into a HD camera lens which gouged out some pieces of scalp.