Citric salt in the wound

As you know, O my internets, I have not yet come to terms in any sense with gardening in California. Almost everything I try fails badly, and I write it down as one more lesson and hope for another year to try again.

And now suddenly I am having to come to terms with gardening in California in drought. I've turned off the backyard irrigation altogether, as we have a leak; Katherine says it just needs a new washer, so hopefully I can fix that soon. Meantime I had blessedly spent the last couple of weeks working out how to control the irrigation at the front, after a couple of years of flinching away from the very idea: you know how I am about responsibility. Wimsey after the war, more or less. But I've figured it out, and dialled it back, and dialled it back again; and even that may very well not be enough. According to the forecasters, we may be legally required to let our lawns go brown. Just when I was planning to reseed at the back, too. Hey-ho...

Still, with any luck that'll kill the bermudagrass, if bermudagrass it be. The nasty creeping stuff, that I was thinking about poisoning.

However: as it happens, the subject-line for this post is nothing to do with the garden. It is, in fact, literal. It will come as a surprise to nobody to learn that I grated my finger yesterday, making cheese bread for the massed yogi. My right index finger, natch: which has made dressing and typing and so forth matters of discomfort and interest all day. I don't think I've left smears of blood all over, but I might've done. And this evening, Mark is coming round for dinner, and I am roasting a chicken 'cos I'm too tired to do anything more complicated. Roasting a chicken calls for rubbing this delightful infusion of lime leaves and salt all over the uncomplaining bird. With my fingers. Um, ouchie...?