there was even more trees flowering today than there was yesterday. my bike ride to belmont was bombarded with colors. the grey and cold weather seemed to make them stand out even more. i was trying to identify all the ones i saw, but my knowledge of flowering cherries is still rudimentary at best.

when i got to my parents' place my father made jiuniang for lunch. he added some osmanthus syrup which made it even more delicious. all that was missing was some glutinous rice balls.

afterwards we went to the waltham home depot, where they had 7ft u-posts for $7.80 each, which was cheaper than all the other nearby home depots that sell them at $9.74, nearly $2 more. unfortunately when we got there the shelves were empty, even though it said online they had 300+ u-posts. we asked a woman working in the garden department for help. she was helpful in that she was trying to find the u-posts for us, but she was so scattered in her approach, i wonder if she was on drugs. she sent me to the other side of the store - in lumber - to ask someone if they knew where the u-posts were, but he had no idea. in the end we decided to just order them online (for pickup or delivery), let them take their time to find the missing inventory. instead we left with 4 cinder blocks (to be used as rain barrel bases).

back at the house we pruned the backyard maple tree. the best time to prune would've been in late winter, when the buds are still dormant. but we've never pruned it in the winter because belmont does start its garden refuse pickup until spring, and there's usually so many branches that we end with a ton of uncollected garden refuse. we removed all the vertical suckers and trimmed back some branches to give the yard some more sunlight. after pruning, we cut up all the branches into smaller pieces so they fit the plastic garbage bins. afterwards we watered some plants and i dug out every dandelion i saw growing on the lawn. our lettuce growing under cover has also germinated.

there was just enough time for me to fly the drone a little bit. i wanted to survey all the flowering trees around the neighborhood, particularly the cherries. i rebooted my phone beforehand, to hopefully clear the memory. even though at times i had some signal issues and the video quality was reduced, the app never froze up on me. i flew up and over the reservoir, then towards burbank school before coming back. when i was bringing the drone in for a landing, that's when i noticed my phone had frozen up. however i was still able to control the drone, and brought it down safely. my phone remained stuck, even after i came in for dinner. finally after a few more minutes it bounced me back to the home screen.

my father was drinking the jiuniang wine. from the two jars of ultra-fermented long grain glutinous rice, he managed to squeeze out about 2 cups of rice wine. it has the consistency of skim milk and smelled strongly of alcohol. it wasn't that sweet, but that just means a lot of the sugar had been converted to alcohol. my father guessed it was probably around 12% alcohol.

riding home, it was cold enough that i put on my gloves. 24 hours ago, last night, i was riding back home in a t-shirt! but this is more typical of april weather here in new england. my glasses also fogged up from the condensation from my face mask, so much so that i pulled it down just so i could see.