GC had to work today, when one of the CFA heads e-mailed him last night with a request to meet, despite it being the 4th of july holiday weekend. technically today is still a work day, but most places gave their employees the day off so they have a 4-day weekend. the "guest list" included other summer researchers, so at the very least there were a few others getting screwed as well. GC left at 9:30am (for him an early start) to arrive there by 10am.

i went to the community garden since i didn't get a chance to go yesterday. nothing new except a single gazania flower bud, ready to open any day now. for an annual they don't seem to grow particularly fast, but pests for the most part seem to keep away from the leaves. i also decided to stop growing the squash seedlings under the protective plastic dome as they're starting to get a bit leggy. this meant i had to use other methods to keep the slugs from eating these seedlings a 3rd time.

back at home i began crushing some leftover eggshells so i could make a slug prevention barrier. i even crushed a small robin egg eggshell that i found a few days ago, no shells shall go to waste. i used a meat tenderizer at first, but once the shells got small enough i could just easily break them down further using my fingers. i ended up with a fine powder which i poured into an empty plastic prescription drug bottle.

i returned to the garden in the afternoon to sprinkle the crushed eggshells around the zucchini seedlings. since i already watered earlier, i didn't have to water again so could avoid washing away the crushed eggshells for the time being.

i then biked to market basket to pick up a few things for the barbecue tomorrow (italian sausages, hamburger buns, scallions, onions, ground mustard, hot sauce, blue cheese), as well as stopping in star market to grab 2 bags of cherries on sale. once back at home, i packed them into my motorcycle saddlebags and rode off to belmont.

in the belmont garden, one of the mixed hot peppers has now been identified as a cayenne from a single green pepper plant. the zucchinis in RB1 are doing much better than RB4. with some good growing weather i can expect to be harvesting our first zucchinis in about a week.

i began making my blue cheese burger meat, which need to be prepared a day in advance (for the ingredients to coalesce?). i returned home after dinner, around 8pm. GC told me that the CFA head who asked them to cut short their weekend vacation and come to the office ended up not showing up at all, which is a total dick move.