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for lunch i had some chicken soup with mushrooms my father made from a few drumsticks. later on i ate one of the leftover pieces of barbecue corn and a garlic parmesan drumstick; the chicken tasted better a day later, i could really taste the smoky flavor.

i fished out all the collected seeds we want to grow this season: bitter melon, long beans, hyacinth beans, buttercup squashes. unfortunately they all prefer warmer weather and i start them now, it still might not be warm enough to transplant come mid-may. so i'm going to hold off on germinating them until a bit later. in the meantime, i will get started on my regular garden vegetables: peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, ground cherries.

i did go out into the backyard and plant some japanese red mustard seeds and tiny foxglove seeds. mustard seeds are tiny, like caviar eggs, i did a broadcast seeding in RB0, RB1, RB2, and the new western garden bed. foxglove seeds are even smaller - like dust - and i even accidentally spilled some on the lawn. those i sprinkled into RB3 and the grapevine bed and the southern bed.

my sister dropped by to refill her bottles of water (she thinks belmont water is better, even though cambridge has its own local reservoir and water treatment plant). she also brought her laptop so i could show her how to boot up with the thumb drive so she can do her taxes. i was glad to see catalina running fine on her computer (though a bit slow), but the turbotax software did a weird thing where it asked me for the serial number - apparently it's keyed to the computer itself, not just the OS. i'd already done most of my sister's taxes by importing her records from last year (2020) and inputting how much she made in 2021. the rest was her trying to eke out some deductions like donations and vehicle excise tax, but none of those numbers changed the final figures. it took no more than 15 minutes, most of which was my sister trying to find the relevant document on her phone.

when it was all over, she wanted to do e-file. i always e-file my federal taxes because it's free, but i mail in my state taxes because there's a $20 fee with turbotax. i tried to talk my sister out of it - said i would personally go to the post office and make sure the taxes were delivered - but she has no concept of saving money, and said they messed up her taxes one time before because she sent it by mail, so now she only e-files no matter the cost. to me it didn't make any sense: file your taxes for less than a $1 postage, or spend $20 to e-file. i gave up in the end, but made me regret helping her if she was just going to squander her refund to pay turbotax.

i didn't do much else the rest of the day. i watched a little bit of julia, that new HBO mini-series about julia child.

for dinner my father made some red-roasted braised spareribs that he'd been slow cooking earlier. the weather looked like it might rain so as soon as i finished eating, i returned home.