when i got there by 8:30am, my father was busy in the backyard watering the plants. this drought and this heatwave has basically destroyed most of our raised bed squashes, whose line vines can't sustain the prolonged heat. i mixed a 2 gallon solution of blue miracle-gro fertilizer (2 large spoonful, about 1.5 tbsp per scoop). there was almost not enough water in the rain barrels to fill my spray canister, and my father even had to switch the watering hose to the wall spigot as our rain barrels are now completely dry.
2 gallons was enough to treat all the plants. my parents left for the cafe midway during my spraying. i stayed until 9:30am before finally leaving myself. i've done all i can, the rest of up to the plants, as there are 3 more days of this heatwave, which will last into sunday. what we really need is rain, and that latest forecast shows maybe monday, scattered thunderstorms.
returning home, i stopped by the community garden to water my plants. the advantage of having a small plot is it doesn't need a lot of water to keep it from drying up.
i visited the house briefly - just enough to use the bathroom and take a quick shower - before i left again by 10:30am, this time to boston via bicycle, to visit chinatown and haymarket. i was worried about the long bike ride in this hot weather, but it wasn't too bad. while i'm moving on the bicycle there's always a breeze, it only gets hot whenever i have to stop at the lights. i also decided to go in the morning instead of the usual afternoon because it wouldn't be as hot. i visited the vet briefly to pick up some medicine for hailey.
i got to chinatown by 11am. i went to ming's market to get some licorice-flavored watermelon seeds, but they were all out. is there a supply issue for chinese mesona (仙草)? i bought pretty much everything here (including heysong and apple sidra sodas), but i still had to go to c-mart to get the special chestnut cookies. after that i continued to haymarket.
originally i was going to get cherries, but i still have two bags of bing cherries that on got on sale from star market. instead i got some baby cucumbers ($3 for 2 lbs), 2 boxes of strawberries ($2), 2 bunches of scallions ($1.50), a bunch of cilantro ($1), and some rainier cherries ($6 for 2 lbs.). i left haymarket via sudbury street, which is a way i've never gone before. i think they just recently made it into a 2-way street because of the on-going parking garage demolition at haymarket and that section of congress to merrimac street is temporarily closed to traffic.
i got back home by 12:25pm. i was going to race down to the cafe to help out because the crowd of teachers that came yesterday might come again, but they didn't, so there was no rush for me to go there. instead i transferred all my chinatown/haymarket haul to my saddlebags and rode to market basket via motorcycle to get some bean sprouts. they had some pork butts in stock on sale, and after i called my mother to let her know, she said my father would go to market basket and pick the appropriate pork chops, and that i should go, don't even bother getting the bean sprouts.
so i went to the cafe to drop off the supplies. i tried the rainier cherries, super sweet. once you've had rainier, you can never go back to regular cherries again. my father came back from market basket a short time later, he basically bought up all the pork butts. a few packages he had ground up for making minced pork. i finally left by 2:30pm.
once back at home, my busy day was basically over, as i didn't have anything else to do today. for lunch i had an instant tonkotsu ramen bowl. i turned on the AC, but would turn it off intermittently once the room temperature got cool enough (75-76 degrees), before turning it back on when the temperature went back up to 83 degrees.
around 4pm i fell asleep on the couch, waking up at 6pm to watch the news.
i wasn't very hungry and didn't have dinner until late, around 10pm, the last of my italian sub. i took a shower first, listening to the bluejays red sox game. i was shocked when the announced the score, something like 20-3 in toronto's favor. the final score was 28-5, looked more like a football game score. boston's season is pretty much over, they're definitely not making it to the playoffs.