it must've happened over the past few nights. i was down in my community garden on tuesday and everything still looked fine. but when i went back this saturday morning things were different. a killing frost had occurred, and many plants were shriveled or crispy. my hyacinth beans looked wilted, and some of the bean pods seemed like they were frost damaged. i came here to collect them, on my way to belmont. i should've brought a bigger bag as i only had 2 small ones. i ended up cramming the remaining bean pods into my backyard.

from the community garden i rode directly to my parents' place. if we had frost in cambridge, most definitely belmont would've experienced the same. all the vine plants looked like they'd melted: the hyacinth beans, bitter melons, morning glories, moon flowers. nasturtiums typically can handle cooler weather but they can't handle the frost, and they were all wilted as well. not sure when we had frost last season. october 28rd i was still desperately trying to rescue some garden plants, then october 30th we had snow, so that was probably our frost date (snow sort of supersedes frost).

the hardy chrysanthemums were still in good shape, apparently it takes more than a touch of frost to kill them. they were buzzing with insects, but not one of them was a honeybee. they were mostly hover flies (occasionally a wasp), which i haven't seen too much lately, i usually see them in the spring when more flowers are in bloom.

while my mother was sorting through the hyacinth beans i brought home and preparing wontons for lunch, i was out in the backyard with hailey. my father was taking down the western bamboo trellises. when i went to go water my grass seedlings, i got sprayed with water: the melnor watering wand must've gotten damaged in the freezing temperature and suffered cracks in the casing.

we went inside for lunch. my father had moved the fudingzhu osmanthus back into the living room again. there was a flourish of new flowers, and we ate while smelling its fragrance. my father cracked open some hyacinth beans but not a single one had ripe seeds, they were all pale. my mother thinks most of them aren't edible, but my father said they'd work well in a stew.

after lunch i was back outside. i dug out the lantana, one of the few plants to have survived the frost, though it looked a bit tender. i transplanted it into a pot so it can live through the winter in our grow room.

my father said there was a large hidden buttercup squash behind the raspberries and i checked it out. later he came out to have the honor of harvesting our last squash while i mowed the leaves around the backyard maple tree and tossed the pulverized clippings into the compost bin. i noticed emerging flower buds on the lilacs, next season's blooms.

we continued with our clean-up, tearing off the vines from the raised bed trellises. bitter melons are easy to tear down, their stems can be pulled apart with a bit of force. hyacinth bean vines on the other hand need to be cut, they grow in tight spirals and their stems get woody as they mature.

in the grow room i noticed our resident jade plant seemed to be droopy. when i checked more closely, it seemed to be infested with thick fat mealybugs. i brought it into the sink and sprayed it down with neem oil.

i was supposed to make gochujang jjigae for dinner, but we forgot to take out the frozen beef chunks from the freezer to defrost. instead my mother made a simply stirfry with some shaved beef i bought last thursday. gochujang stew will have to wait until tomrrow.

after dinner i went out into the backyard with a flashlight to disconnect the hoses from our seaflo on-demand pump and drain out the water. i didn't want the possibility of freezing water overnight damaging the pump. i also unscrewed the filter valve and poured out the water in there.

like this morning, i needed to turn on the choke in order to start the motorcycle. temperature was 41°F, a little chilly but not too bad as i rode home.

earlier this morning - before i left - my replacement led spotlight arrived from home depot. i installed the bulb into my kitchen recessed light, now everything is back to normal. also paul finally paid me for the plumbing work. he wrote me an e-mail saying he owned me 38¢ because he rounded down for some reason. i told him it was okay.