in the late morning i drove out to get some gasoline in the fuel can. it seems a little strange to be pumping gas not into a vehicle but rather just a plastic container. i got about 2 gallons worth of unleaded, put it in a box so it wouldn't tip over while i was driving.

i then made a stop at burger king on my way to belmont. they had a 2 for $6 special on 2 sandwiches, i got a whopper and a spicy chicken. i also got an order of 10 pieces chicken nuggets for just $1. they seemed very busy, but more than half of the cars in the parking lot didn't belong to customers (nearby construction site might be sharing the lot). close to lunchtime, it seems to be a popular place for local contractors. i counted at least six people working, all hispanic. they had a staffing issue a while back (that time my father and i came and could only order from the drive-through because there weren't enough people to work the register) but they seemed to have taken care of it by hiring all new people.

first thing i did when i got to belmont was bring out all the garden refuse bins. garden refuse collection is typically late (3-4pm) so i still had time. then i had lunch. i ate the spicy chicken sandwich, saving the whopper for dinner. the burger king spicy chicken is not very good, a farcry from the one true spicy chicken sandwich from wendy's. i still mourn the lose of the central square wendy's; now the closest wendy's to me is the one in malden.

i'd planned on finally taking out the motorcycle from the garage. it's been almost a month since i last rode the bike (doesn't feel that long), i stored it in the garage shortly after my parents left on vacation. i put the new registration inside my helmet and put on the new 2019 registration sticker. however, i suddenly remembered that we're due to have some snow thursday night into friday. wouldn't it be better if i kept the bike here until all the snow has melted? chances are there won't even be any accumulation, but why take the risk? what's a few more days? besides, as a rule, i usually put the bike away for the season when we get our first big snowstorm. this one isn't it, but the season looks to be winding down.

while in the garage i repaired the the lawn mower cover with some superglue. i ended up mowing the front lawn once more, just to clean up the leaves. i dumped the shredded leaves in the compost bin. there wasn't enough leaves in the backyard for mowing.

in the backyard i started cutting down all the leftover perennial leaves down to the roots: ornamental grass, lilies, irises, gladiolas. it might've been easier with a pair of hedge shears but all i had was a knife which worked just as well with a little more work.

next project was repairing the raised beds. since the old wood screws were still in very good condition, i decided to reuse them. i had the correct star bit and was able to remove the old screws. i then added a corner brace block and screws the planks back onto the brace. ideally i would've wanted to repair all the raised beds, but i could only fix RB4 because it was just so cold outside. RB4 was high priority because i wanted to set up a small garlic bed. i took all the small leftover garlic bulbs from this summer, broke them down into cloves, and planted all of them. i read that these smaller garlics would take too long to grow into larger garlics, but they do make nice spring garlics (like scallions) come spring time. i added some organic fertilizer along with some blood meal before covering over everything with some salt marsh hay and a wire screen to prevent squirrels from getting to the garlic. RB4 gets very little sunlight so i don't know how many of these small garlics while emerge, but better than to have them sit around and dry up.

i found my package of hollyhock seeds i'd saved up some years back. these were actually treated in the freezer to kill the weevils. i had so much, i just sort of sprinkled it into RB3 and then worked the seeds into the soil. not sure if they'll germinate but worth a try. this year we didn't get any hollyhocks, they were favorite by rabbits who ate them all.

although the sun was out today, it was so cold (temperature in the 30's) that i wasn't able to strip down to my t-shirt and work outdoors. i did take off my jacket at one point because it was getting in the way but put it back on 20 minutes later because i was getting cold.

i left belmont by 3pm, didn't want to wait for the refuse trucks to arrive. when i got home, i put out the large bag of dead leaves i collected over the weekend.

for dinner, i reheated the burger patty from my whopper before assembling it back together.

later in the evening my parents contacted me from the taipei airport to confirm their arrival time back to boston tomorrow evening. they're scheduled to come back on japan airline at 5pm, which is a terrible time to be driving in or out of the city. there's also a forecast of snow for tomorrow night, but thankfully not at the same time.