around this time of year, sundays are all about football. i figured out what time the patriots game is playing (early afternoon, late afternoon, or night game) then i shuffle my sunday schedule around it.

this morning i actually did something constructive: i grabbed a plastic bag, gloves, and pruning shearers, and walked down to the community garden. seriously, i have been there since september. it's been nearly 3 weeks since my last visit. the garden was empty, except for two adults talking while 3 boys trampled through the plots noisily playing hide and seek. i don't even think they were gardeners here, just some randos. they spoke to me so it'd seem like they belonged in the garden but i saw through their ruse.

surprisingly little had changed in my plot except the hyacinth beans were now covered in seed pods and the purple monkshood were in bloom. i harvested a few plum-sized red tomatoes. i also did some light pruning, cutting back the spent goldenrods and garlic chives, pulling up the eggplants. temperature this morning was actually a bit chilly and i wore a light jacket but i managed to work up a sweat. at one point jen came to the garden and we chatted briefly. she looked at me and rolled her eyes when those boys ran screaming down the path. after about 30 minutes i returned home.

my mother was shuffling through the house, feeling the side effects of the pfizer booster vaccine she got yesterday. she didn't have the energy to make lunch, told me to toast some naan bread in the oven and finish some leftover porkchops from last night. she then crawled into bed, watching videos from her bedside gooseneck phone holder, nursing a fever.

there wasn't much gardening to be done outdoors, but inside, in our basement grow room, there was plenty to do. while my father pruned the cactuses and the water reed, i tested our electric appliances to see how much electricity each one used, so i could figure out how much electricity our grow room uses in a month. long story short, the grow room uses 450Wh which comes out to 3.6kWh per day (we turn on the lights for 8 hours). in a month that's 108kWh of usage. we made some equipment adjustments: i replaced the vander grow light with the luxauto because it's brighter; i turned off the 4ft shop light between the two wire shelves because the 2 LED grow lights provide more than enough light; i also turned off one of the barrina under-cabinet grow lights - the one hanging from above - but it seemed like too much.

inside the grow room the temperature is 75°F with a humidity of 73%. it feels like being in a tropical greenhouse. no wonder plants like jasmines and gardenia do so well here. i don't know what temperature/humidity is like at nights, but they must be lower, which is also ideal for these plants. my father noticed that the prayer plants look a bit soft being directly underneath the under-cabinet light, so we moved it to someplace where it doesn't get a lot of light because they seem to thrive with less light. we also moved a few of the pileas, in case the ones underneath the lights get sunburned. i moved the orchids outside and sprayed them with neem oil. i haven't seen mealybugs, but i did see a few white specks, so i'm basically going to spray them whenever i can as a preventative measure. one of our next project is to replant the orchids in larger pots.

whenever we move in outdoor houseplants we get some insect hitchhikers. i saw a leafhopper, a jumping spider, and a mosquito. i need to keep my eyes opened for aphids and mealybugs, two indoor plant pests.

at 4pm i stopped what i was doing and went to go watch the patriots game against the cowboys. it was a close game and it even went into overtime, with dallas scoring a touchdown to win the game. new england is now 2-4, with all four loses surprisingly at home. it was another game they could've won, like the tampa bay game, or the dolphin game. victories seem so elusive, which is a weird thing to experience for a patriots fan. but mac jones hasn't done anything to make me think he won't be the future of the franchise. they say his best asset is his accuracy, and i totally believe it, some of his throws are amazing, and he's also quick to release too. just unfortunate our record doesn't reflect what a great quarterback he is.

my mother was well enough to come out and eat dinner. my father grilled some pork short ribs on the barbecue and i made some smashed cucumbers. my mother said they were too salty and added some more cucumbers, along with some chopped garlic and a bit of sugar. my father also made some squash porridge with dates. he added some dried cherries thinking they were like raisins, but they left a tart/sour taste to the porridge.

i stayed long enough in belmont to watch the end of the patriots game in overtime. as i was about to leave, i heard my father's macbook pro making a series of 3 beeping noises. that usually means damaged RAM's but we were able to reboot the computer. however, whenever we closed the lid, it would hard shutdown, and the only way to get the computer back on was to press the power button for a long time. at one point the screen even went crazy. so long as the lid remains open, the macbook's fine. we can even tell it to go to sleep from the menubar, no problems. just that when we close the lid, that's when it crashes. this mid-2012 15" macbook pro has been repaired before (mother board issues) so it doesn't surprise me all that much that it's having issues again. hopefully it's just a RAM issue, and i'll try swapping out the memories tomorrow to see if that will fix the problem.

riding home, my light jacket was barely enough in the cooler weather. we have street cleaning tomorrow so half the street was empty of cars. luckily there was a half spot right in front of my house, just big enough to squeeze in my motorcycle.