(morning writing, garden, cooking, weather, adhd)

Executive function amok.

No better or worse, i suppose, just different.

More snow (or ice or sleet or freezing rain). This hits the day before Dad heads to Florida and care of my mom is switched off between my sister, B-- the hired companion, and briefly me. The sub freezing Saturday (sorry to complain about what is probably nothing to people who live in colder climes) was going to be when i got the bare root trees really planted. I "heeled them in" in the vegetable plot (more or less, i wonder how important the angle of repose is) on Monday. I still have fences to make to protect all but the sweet bays from the deer.

The sweet bays are less likely to be devoured. Probably more like i saw out the window a week ago: a deer walked by, ripped a leaf off the hellebore, and then spat it out and kept going. If it had tasted good, i'm sure the deer would have kept eating. The hazels and the southern crabapple - a native - are more likely to be eaten to the ground.

Anyhow, i want to garden, but snow and cold (i may still get out, depending), then next week plus is Mom care. And Dad's departure on roads that may be black ice? Yikes. Worries.

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Christine woke with a panic attack and migraine. It's not unusual. It's so unfair. I can't imagine how hard things must be without the magic of, "I'll go to sleep now and things will seem better in the morning."

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I made a coconut milk daal and a tomato based aloo matar for dinner last night. I miss having a local Indian restaurant, and i think to the blink of time we lived in proximity to an Indian restaurant that delivered -- oh, the Kashmiri Naan and the tandoori shrimp -- but I have been managing to fill that gap. Store bought tandoori paste enlivened sheet pan cauliflower and tofu a week or so ago, and there's store bought naan that is a decent compliment. It probably helps that i haven't had restaurant Indian food for a while. I'm not buying curry powder or garam masala because they seem to mostly have spices i already have.

I'm out of mustard seeds - the last time i cooked all the ones i had grown in the garden. I still have coriander from the garden: that seems to have established a good volunteer community. I've bought cumin seed to grow. The guides for growing it have some seemingly bizarre advice, "When planning to grow cumin it is important to understand that each plant produces a small number of seeds. If you wish to grow large quantities of cumin, you will need to calculate how much space you require to produce an adequate crop" or worse, "Each plant only produces a few fruit and each fruit only contains one seed, so there needs to be a large crop to collect a useable amount of seed."

Have these people met dill and coriander? Wtf Fruit?

I mean, if i was making enchilada sauce from scratch every few days and then curries on the alternate days, yeah, you need LOTS of cumin. But i really suspect that 90% of the garden guides are written by people repackaging some other source and here is an amplification of some error. I don't think it's confusion with Nigella, which i did find in other sources.

I've bought fresh dill seed and fresh cumin and i am planting them all in waves this year because i am guessing that the seed doesn't keep that well? And if this fails, i will buy a dill plant and let it go to seed. And if that fails, i will give up on dill (and not bother with caraway and cumin). I will be thankful that somehow coriander aka cilantro took up in my soil and that i can enjoy it. I am also going to buy a lovage plant as my seed starts for that have failed. And i'm putting rabbit fencing up or paying someone to do so because that's the other possible cause of failure. Well, then there will be the caterpillars. I do remember them devouring a few plants the first year.

Anyhow, there brain, you have spent your time chittering on. I hope we can Get Stuff Done Now. (Like replies to everyone's helpful git messages.)