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my second night sleeping in the guest bedroom was a much better experience after i brought out the comforter. it was so cozy that i didn't even want to leave the bed this morning. when i finally did wake up, i went online and paid my condo home owner insurance premium which was due on friday. $960 this year, an increase of $100. i looked around at the competitors and nobody gave me as much coverage as my current company. i'll look again next year if the premium goes up once more.

anne marie sent an e-mail around noontime asking those who were interested in some shady perennials what they wanted, as she was in her aunt's backyard. originally i expressed interest in some astilbes, but she mentioned monkshood on her list. monkshoods. that's one of my dream plants, so i asked her for monkshood instead. the first time i've ever encountered monkshood was at elias' vermont wedding back in 2008. i next encountered out in the wild, in the mountains of west sichuan in 2014. my dream is to recreate some of the widlflowers i saw while i was in the kham highlands.

i went down to the community garden in the early evening because anne marie said she had some other free perennials if people were interested. it wasn't fun being outside, with the cold and the rain, and it was actually a little foggy as well. i wore my rain boots and put on my winter jacket, dressing like i would for winter when it was june.

no one else was in the garden but i did see the new fence the city put up. unfortunately it's several feet too tall, and there was a lot of community garden activity getting people to write to the city to complain. when i got to my plot i saw beth working on her own garden. she showed me a bunch of zinnias that'd been stripped by what i imagine to be slugs. her kale was also getting eaten, and that one was easier to solve, because all the dark pellets meant there was a caterpillar feeding on her plant. while we were talking anne marie showed up. that's when i noticed she had already put the monkshood and astilbe in my garden. i also picked up a large hosta from the pile of extra perennials she collected.

i walked home with beth, who also grabbed a bag of hostas. mine was in heavy pot and i could only carry it for a few feet before i had to put it down. it went like this for a while, until beth helped me lift the other end. i was a few houses away from home when neil saw us and helped me carry the hosta the rest of the way. he's deceptively strong and looked like he could carry the whole pot by himself without any help. after i got it back, i decided to plant it immediately in the backyard, since i was already dirty anyway.

i did a load of laundry while i went to go take a shower. my grandmother was at the cafe and insisted on going to a buffet restaurant. the nearest one is tin tin buffet, which is a terrible place, and i had no interest in going. it seemed like they weren't going to go out to dinner on my grandmother's last night in boston, but they went to the buffet restaurant after all. later my mother told me it wasn't at all crowded and they had ribs tonight. i just heated 2 zongzi for dinner.

karen returned to mexico on thursday night, but only now did i get a chance to catalog all the things she left behind. there were a few food items that i already ate - some deli-sliced turkey and brownies - but the rest is still there.