We went walking in Rock Meadow, a conservation area in Belmont, with Charley, Maija, and Ari. Part of the idea was to give Patsy some time alone when she could concentrate on her thesis. Arlene and I used to go birding in Rock Meadow often, but we’ve only been there twice in quite some time. Today we took a trail that we haven’t been on before, through a lovely section of rolling meadow and some woods. We didn’t see any remarkable birds.
When we got home it was time for me to tune in to a zoom presentation about growing apple trees from MOFGA. There were four different one hour sessions. Unfortunately I had missed half of the one I was most interested in, but I learned a lot from the second (about propagating fruit trees, especially the rootstock parts) and third (about how to care for baby trees and what the main dangers to baby apple trees are — mice, that can eat the bark all around a tree; deer, that can eat most of a small tree; and apple borer grubs). The fourth was listed as “apple tree genetics” but really more like apple tree genealogy — what are the parent and grandparent trees of this and that variety? The presenter, from the University of Washington, has a big database of apple DNA and can do a “23 and me” style analysis of apple DNA to tell you what variety an apple tree is.
For supper we had take-out Chinese food from Dumpling House in 4 Corners. I drove over to pick it up. This is a BIG DEAL, another “emerging from the pandemic” thing, one of the first times we have eaten restaurant food in a year. We had chicken – cabbage dumplings to share, Arlene got chicken with vegetables and I got kung pao chicken. Kung pao chicken is supposed to be hot, but I have never felt it was very hot before this batch. I don’t know if I’m out of practice eating food that has a lot of hot pepper in it or if this really is spicier than most. Whatever, it suited me just fine.
I finished editing the audio for the euphonium parts of “Overture to Candide” for SymBa. I say parts, plural, because there is a split for a dozen measures near the end and I recorded and edited both parts.