* took karen to her first dollar tree experience then the somerville winter farmers market at the armory. she accidentally smashed the screen on her iphone 4.

* noontime biked down to the joslin center. karen rode the trek mountain bike. she's a slow rider, i had to stop numerous times to wait for her to catch up. on top of that her chain kept skipping, turns out she was riding on the innermost gear, the chain stopped skipping once we put the bike into the middle gear. then we went to shillman hall at northeastern university to attend some workshops at the 42nd annual gardeners' gathering. i went to urban beekeeping, biochar, and mushroom cultivation. karen went to tomatoes, backyard chickens, and mushroom as well.

* came home and made risotto for dinner while karen fried some plantains. i only had hald a red onion and my frozen broccoli looked a little freezer burned. neverthless, the risotto plus a bottle of woodchuck amber hard cider was the perfect food after a hard day of cold biking. the plantains were very good too, paired with some slices of cheese. i still haven't made my mushroom prosciutto risotto, hopefully next time will be the charm. in the meantime i still have some raw leftover sausages that i will have to use up soon before it spoils.

* not much going on in the grow closet except one of the zebrina seemed to have dried up and died. i really think it's the soil, avoid vigoro in the future. fortunately i have plenty of spare zebrinas, i'll just transplant one over tomorrow.

* i went to bed at 3am last night but woke up at 7am from the children stomping in the kitchen. this only happened briefly but annoyed me enough that i couldn't go back to sleep. fortunately paul and the gang went out in the late morning, and didn't come back home until the evening, when it was too late to let the children run around upstairs.