i biked to belmont afterwards. with rain expected tomorrow, i found a great parking spot for my motorcycle and didn't want to move it. besides, i haven't biked to belmont in ages, so it was something new. earlier this morning my parents went to baifu to get some cafe supplies. i found my father in the backyard continuing to water the lawn to try and use up as much rain water as possible before it all gets replenished tomorrow. my father was also grilling drumsticks and corn on the barbecue for lunch. i had those plus some leftover rice noodles.
after lunch i drove to home depot to gather more aeroponic materials. i needed parts to assemble a sight tube/drain for the plastic tote: a 1/2" grommet, 1/2" barbed elbow fitting, and some 1/2" tubing. for some reason finding 1/2" barbed elbow fittings for irrigation is really difficult, and home depot didn't carry what i wanted. 
the closest i found were these blue polypropylene apollo-brand twister insert elbows (71¢), so i decided to get one and try it out. next i tried to find proper tubing. i could've sworn the used to sell them cut to length, but now they only sell them in packed coils, in lengths of 10ft and 20ft. i only needed a foot worth of 1/2" tubing, so decided to try and find something cheaper online. finally i grabbed the rubber grommet, the last one in stock. i also bought some miracle-gro cactus soil for repotting the broken thanksgiving/christmas cactuses. i got two bags ($8.97 per cu.ft.) along with some perlite ($4.98 8qt).
when i returned home, my father and i repotted the broken cactuses. we decided to use the cactus soil as-is, without adding additional perlite. the cactus soil seems like a blend of compost, sand, fertilizer pellets, and a bit of perlite (so we could've mixed our own essentially). the largest cactus - the christmas cactus - was also the one that sustained the most damage, most of the cactus "leaves" having been broken off when it fell from the shelf and tumbled down the cafe basement stairs. all that was left was the bare "trunks" of the cactus. we used that as the centerpiece and then planted the broken branches all around. it also left behind numerous small side shoots, which we managed to repot into 3 additional hanging containers. there was also a thanksgiving cactus. it broken into smaller pieces, we were able to repot all of it in a more shallow pot. to be honest, despite the damage, we managed to salvage most of it, and from original two large potted cactuses we managed to get 5 potted cactuses. we only used up a bag of cactus soil, but my father said to keep the 2nd bag as he's planning on repotted the dragon fruit cactuses before we move them into the basement in mid-fall.
next we fertilized our garden. i mixed 3 buckets of blue miracle-gro fertilizer. i also watered the orchids using the dunking method with a weak solution of orchid fertilizer.
in the late afternoon with storm clouds beginning to assemble on the horizon, i grabbed my drone and sent it up in the sky to survey the clouds. i went as high as i could go (DJI has a limit of 1600ft) and took a panoramic photo before coming back down. i also managed to check out our western bed bitter melon trellis from the sky. the way it climbs and grows, it really does act like a green screen for shade. i also saw a squash that appears to be growing from our neighbor's garden climbing back into our yard.
i went to the basement grow room to inspect the hydroponic mustards. that one plant in the large jar seemed to have doubled in size since i last saw it yesterday. i also had time to see what it'd look like to have 12 3" net cups on the tote storage lid. looks like a perfect fit, and each plant has about 6-7" diameter to grow before it hits a neighbor, so plenty of space.
for dinner we had the leftover drumsticks from earlier, but my parents also made sour fish stew (with the fish fillets i bought this morning) mixed with rice.
when it came time for me to return home, i strapped the gopro to the handlebar and shot a timewarp video using linear angle horizon-leveling. i also set the ISO to maximum (6400), to compensate for the darkness. i reviewed the video when i got back, still pretty blurry, the gopro is not designed for night action videography. because of the higher ISO value, it was also grainy too. it did however do a great job leveling the horizon as promised, none of that tilted angle view that i normally get.
i decided the blue apollo-brand twister insert elbow wasn't going to work out. instead i went online to try and find a more traditional barbed irrigation elbow. and by online i meant amazon, since everywhere else where i could find what i wanted charged so much shipping that it made it not worthwhile. the only caveat with buying from amazon is i couldn't just get one, i had to buy a pack. i ended up getting 24 pieces for $4.59 (i only needed one!), the cheapest i could find (arriving friday). i'm tempted to sell the rest individually on ebay, since there seems to be a market for these hard-to-source items.