after pouring out the latest bucket of leak water from the basement (hopefully the last time before the plumber arrives tomorrow), i went to the community garden to do some watering. i also harvested a head of bokchoi cabbage after my mother saw my photo of it the other day and said she wanted it. i noticed somebody had harvested my garlic chives again. i'm still not sure if this was human or animal, although i didn't think any critters ate garlic chives, and this has never happened in the past, just this year.

back at home, i repotted and divided my prayer plants. the last time i did that was in september 2019. but since then i haven't been watering regularly, the soil has gotten crusty, and there's been a fungus gnat infestation. i brought back from new potting soil yesterday, and it was just enough to refill the 3 potted prayer plants. they were growing leggy enough that i could only salvage one plant with roots, with the rest became cuttings. prayer plants root very easily since each segment has rooting nodules, but after i washed them i dipped the cuttings in rooting hormone just to help it out.

i still had some potting soil left so i repotted the small thanksgiving cactus as well as the aloe, consolidating my 2 aloe plants into a single pot.

i rode to belmont, with a bag of used potting soil and my harvested bokchoi in my saddlebags. i had some leftover rice noodles for lunch as well as a salted egg yolk pastry.

in the late afternoon my father mowed the lawn while i filled up buckets of miracle-gro soluble fertilizer to water our plants. afterwards i mixed a 1-1/2 gallon solution for foliar treatment, particularly on the vining squash plants. the squashes are weird, all the new leaves growing on top of the canopy are large massive ones. they look super healthy, but still we're not getting a lot of squash production. some of them have managed to produce a second squash, but still nothing like what we had in mind when we first planted the squash seedlings, that we could get 3-4 squashes per vine.

i divided my pilea plant. i managed to get 7 additional potted babies besides the mother plant. some of them were tiny - i read the babies should be at least 2" before dividing. but i didn't want them still attached to the mother plant so i just removed all of them.

my father showed me the broken gardener kneeler. he managed to crack the plastic insert. he was asking me if i could contact the company and buy a replacement part. we were just a few days shy of the return window, and when i looked up the company there was no mention of any sort of warranty. later i sent them a message via amazon, asking if they sold spare parts.

my father told me my mother counted 20 bitter melons currently growing. so far none of them are big enough to harvest yet. just think: we have all these bitter melons from only 3 plants. bitter melon has the spirit of a weed. also it doesn't seem to be bothered by insects or diseases, the ultimate high yield low maintenance garden plant.

my mother cooked some of the japanese eggplants for dinner, but in a cold sour dish, not the typical slow-cooked eggplants with thai basil. i returned home after dinner.

i haven't been sleeping well this past week, the stress of leaking pipes and water damage plaguing my mind, making me wake up earlier than usual in order to go down to the basement and empty the catch bucket. that's why if i sit or lie down somewhere during the daytime and even the early evening, i start dozing off within minutes. i'm hoping to get some early sleep tonight.