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the grey wet weather from 2021 continues into 2022. there was a slight drizzle (and more rain throughout the day) so my father came to give me a ride this morning on his way to market basket to get a few items. my mother originally wanted to come along to visit costco, until i told her they were all closed today. i thought market basket would be crowded on new year's day, but the place was empty, i've never seen the parking lot so devoid of cars. so if you ever want to visit market basket when it's not crowded, january 1st is a good day to do it.

we were almost back to the cafe when my father remembered he forgot to pick up the ground pork the butcher prepared for him. so we drove back for him to get it before stopping at the cafe to drop off the supplies then continuing onwards to belmont.

my mother made wonton soup for lunch, my father baked some garlic texas toast in the toaster oven. i was surprised to see the birthday balloons still floating, no sign of deflation.

today was a very strange day weatherwise. it's already january and the temperature was in the 50's on a foggy and wet grey day. i went into the backyard to refill the suet feeder and seed feeder. i took off one of the lead fishing weights on the squirrel buster feeder but it seems like some birds (like cardinals) were having a hard time getting to the sunflowers. i saw some a few chickadees and a junco. i hung the suet feeder horizontally so it was harder for the squirrels to get to it.

an unusually warm winter so far meant the radishes and mustards are still growing in the raised beds, both uncovered and covered. of course the ones under the cover are much larger, but the ones "outside" aren't doing too bad either, with zero frost damage even though we've had some cold nights to form ice puddles.

our grow room project for today was to repot the fudingzhu osmanthus. this was something i thought of last week, but my father had similar thoughts. the plant seemed so healthy when we first got it, the only thing we did differently was to repot it. maybe there's something wrong with the potting soil, which has a combination of sand and commercial chicken manure pellets. we repotted it outside (since it was so warm, and so we wouldn't make a mess indoors) with some leftover potting soil. we also split one of the pileas because my father wants to give one to my godmother. he wasn't careful with the division, broke off 2 precious leaves on a plant that's already slow growing. he's going to give the bigger one to my godmother, we're going to save the smaller one.

for dinner i tried some shaoxing wine. it's served hot, and my parents also added some dried prunes for flavoring. i don't like it as much as baijiu, it tastes like chinese medicine or medicinal soup mixed with some alcohol.

my father gave me a ride after dinner. the temperature didn't drop all that much, just 49 degrees, still above average and feeling balmy on the first day of 2022. i ate some mandarin oranges and snacked on some watermelon seeds the rest of the evening.