t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i left for belmont early - before 10am - since my parents were planning on a costco supply run. that early on a sunday morning, there was hardly any cars (or people for that matter) on the roads, so it was a quick trip. my mother made some crispy pancakes stuffed with pork floss for lunch.

i went out into the backyard to inspect the garden, but there wasn't too much to do since we mostly did them all yesterday. my father says so far there are 6 squashes of various sizes growing in the raised beds. the weather was kind of grey in the morning so i managed to see a few squash blossoms before they close up for the day.

my sister came by with hailey - i think maybe she planned on dropping her off - but when she heard we were going out to costco, she ended up returning home.

we finally left for the waltham costco by 11:30am, getting there 20 minutes later. costco was crowded - which is typical for the weekend - but it wasn't crazy. i was hoping there might be some fans on sale but apparently they're only available online, none in the store. i noticed there some more asian foods i'd never seen before: 2 types of instant taiwanese boba drinks, taiwanese sticky rice, frozen durian pulp, sichuan mapo tofu, and instant sapporo-style miso ramen. my mother bought a large potted lavender ($18, not english, looks like spanish, though i'm not well-versed in my lavenders).

we finished shopping by 12:30pm, then drove to the cafe to drop off the supplies. my parents marinated some charsiu pork before we left.

back at the house, i had a danish and some dried alasak pollock, washed down with some leftover store-bought suanmeitang drink.

i remounted the sun room webcam that looks into the backyard. the way i had it before was it was just sitting on the windowsill. that used to work, but now with our plants starting to fill out the trellises, the view will be obstructed, so the camera should be mounted higher. i used nano double-sided tape to secure the mounting plate to the window. it works well, but because now the camera is in front of the khaki-colored sun shade, the bright glare from the shades washes out the image. i'll try experimenting with the 37mm circular polarizing filter that came a few days ago, maybe that will help.

in the late afternoon i did some houseplant maintenance. i moved out all the remaining houseplants - orchids, pileas, prayer plants, jade plants - so i could water them. the 3 orchids i water using a submersion technique doused with some special orchid fertilizer. i left each pot to soak for a while before soaking another pot. as for the other plants, i water them with mosquito-bit-infused water, to kill the fungus gnats. i may need to divide my prayer plants and repot them, the soil looks a bit dry. i did however divide the pileas though: there were 3 plants that were crowded with babies. i removed them for their pots then pruned off the buds so i could replant them. from 3 pilea plants i ended up with 20 babies. not sure what i'm going to do with them all, either give them away or sell them, provided they can survive the transplant.

finally it came time for the 5th and final fungicide treatment on the grapevines. my father made a terrible mistake a few weeks ago when he decided to prune the grapes without asking me first, thereby cutting off all the new vines that would produce the grape fruits. this time last year we already had tons of green grapes on the vine; this year only maybe 4-5 clusters. the one good thing that might come out of this is it could break the disease cycle, since black rot needs to incubate in the grape fruits (grape mummies) so it can reinfect next season. anyway, i started spraying, everything was going fine, but i suddenly felt this cool breeze on my bare legs. i thought nothing of it at first, i heard this hissing sound, and when i went to pump the sprayer, i saw a fine spray of fungicide water leaking out from the bottom of the spray container. the pressure quickly pushed out the 1/2 gallon of solution. the cool breeze was fungicide spraying onto my legs.

around 6:15pm my father took out the new york strip steaks and grilled them on the barbecue. they'd been out for an hour and my mother seasoned them with montreal steak seasoning while my father brushed some melted butter on the steaks. we cleaned the grill beforehand, scooping out all the ash from the bottom of the barbecue, so it doesn't ignite when beef fat drips onto them. my father also grilled some long-horn peppers. we went with 3-minutes per side on the steaks, to keep them medium-rare. there didn't seem to be enough of a crust though, so we added another minute to each side. there were hardly any flare-ups because of the cleaning we did beforehand; it was weird grilling foods that was scorched by non-stop flames.

the steaks turned out to be perfectly cooked at medium-rare. unlike the porterhouse steaks we had yesterday (which were just a delicious) that were on the dry side (being medium-well done), these medium-rare new york strip steaks were super juicy. the only thing i'd change is maybe more seasoning on both sides. since we only had two pieces of steaks, my mother said she didn't want any and let my father and i have them, though we gave her some sample pieces to try.

i returned home by 7:50pm. i wasn't playing around this time, i turned on the AC as soon as i got back, as well as my air purifier, to circulate the air. i then went to go take a shower and when i came out, the living room was nice and cold.