i left the house late - 10:45am - for my run. the weather was cool, so temperature wasn't a concern. what was concerning was the overcast and the threat of showers. should've realized that any rain forecast would just turn to dust now that eastern massachusetts is in extreme drought mode. i did feel a few sprinkles, but my fantasy of running in the drenching rain would not materialize. i did something for the first time today, which was running across the JFK bridge. when i got to the eliot bridge i slowed to a walk. perhaps one day soon i'll be able to run a continuous loop with no walk breaks.
walking back home from the river, i noticed all the damaged sidewalk trees due to the drought. prematurely color changing leaves (or worse, dried dead leaves due to lack of watering) and insect damage (dehydrated trees can't mount any effective defenses or properly heal).
when i got back, i made two quorn burgers for lunch. i plan on eating up all my quorn supply so i can have luxury korean ramen tomorrow night for dinner, which is kind of my friday night tradition now.
after that i went out into the backyard and applied timber oil to a few more vertical deck posts. there wasn't a lot of oil left, i had to be selective with my application. i also noticed paul didn't do a good job when he applied timber oil before they left; there were bare spots, like he didn't take the time to make sure he was getting full coverage. finally, when i was on the mid-deck, i noticed i could get it to shake. is the deck secure? because some of the support beams have cracks in them. something to address for the future.
with my upstairs neighbors possibly returning today, i cleaned up the backyard a bit, sweeping the debris from the stone steps. the front piece of yard looked dry so i watered it, as well as the locust tree in front of the house. for my efforts i got a few mosquito bites.
in the afternoon i rode to whole foods to return a few amazon purchases (eufy pan cam and digital wall clock). i then went to market basket to get supplies for the cafe, before swinging by there to drop them off. i'd been doing a lot of countertop oven research, and i told my mother that although the panasonic flashxpress is a great toaster oven, it's small capacity and limited timer is not really designed for baking. 
she resigned herself to the fact that we would still need to buy a new countertop oven this weekend. she wanted the ninja foodi smart XL air fry oven, but i managed to talk her into getting the more expensive ($400) breville. i also wanted to stop by best buy/target to check out the floor models one more time, but my mother said not to bother. it was getting late anyway, and i didn't want to get stuck in traffic, so i decided to return home instead.
i stopped by the community garden to do some watering. i spotted a mother turkey and a chick wandering around the garden. ann was there, hadn't seen her in a while. she wasn't wearing her hat or her usual hippy biker chick outfit, i almost didn't recognize her. she gave me some zinnias from her garden.
as for my own garden, i have a bunch of ripened orange bitter melons, but i keep on missing the edible green ones. i harvested some red serrano peppers, most of them rotten from over-ripening; it's weird that they don't dry on the plant, either they fall off or rot, a difficult pepper to raise. i also picked off a few thai chili peppers, which are more reasonable. looks like i'm going to get some habanero peppers; the plant itself is in a pot, i'm tempted to bring it inside during the winter and keep it alive for next season. i harvested a bunch of long beans, most of them have dried, and those on the vine are close to drying up as well. there's a lot of nigella seed pods that i have to come back tomorrow and collect before the seeds spill out. finally, i spotted a praying mantis in one of the other gardens.
ann and i left together. we saw a neighbor had thrown out a spirograph kit, she grabbed it for me when i waxing nostalgic about having one as a kid.
i spent the rest of the day at home. i fell asleep on the couch around 6:30pm, waking up an hour later to close the blinds, before napping for another hour. not sure why i was so tired, maybe it was from the late morning run. for dinner i didn't want to eat anymore quorn so i quickly made some ramen, added an egg and some lettuce to make it somewhat healthier.