Author: Papa Sandemano

How I Make the Chaos Make Sense

You know how sometimes you avoid looking at a mess because if you stop and look at the clusterfuck, you start to feel like you’re failing?

Yeah? I’ll give you an example—take my Notes app.

This whole rabbit hole started because I asked ChatGPT a stupidly simple question: What open loops do I have?

It started pulling together the shit I’d been talking about for days — house projects, cars, work stuff, the website, things I wanted to learn — and suddenly I was looking at the problem backwards.

Here’s what usually happens: I have an idea, I document it somehow — usually a photo, sometimes an actual note if I remember or can muster up the ambition — and then it disappears into the dark hole that is my phone.

Notes is especially bad for this. I’ve managed to stuff more than eight hundred things in there over the last two years.

This morning I had a couple of hours to burn, so instead of working on a post for this site, I went digging through Notes.

Inside were abandoned projects, random Quick Notes, a Smart Folder I forgot existed — and apparently forgot how it worked — plus an old goal system that made me wonder, “What the fuck was I smoking back in 2024, and how can I get some more?”

I was really into Tiago Forte’s PARA system for a while (Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives) but I think I was treating it too much like a filing system. It felt like WORK.

This goes here. That goes there. Make the folder. Put the note in the folder.

Which works, I guess—until the system gets big enough that half the problem is remembering what you called the fucking thing in the first place.

I didn’t need Notes to constantly show me everything. I needed Notes to give everything a home, and ChatGPT to be the thing I could think through it with.

PARA could be the structure underneath it all. Projects, Areas, Reference, Archive. Simple enough.

That way, I wouldn’t ignore every note yelling “DO ME!” at me all at once. Notes could hold the mess while Pins and Smart Folders showed me what actually mattered.

Active projects get pinned. Smart Folders can pull together things like Current Goals without me building another fucking filing system inside the filing system.

The cleaned-up version: PARA for structure, Current Goals as a dashboard, and active projects kept visible.

Drafts and ideas don’t need much more than that. Just because I had an idea and thought about it for more than five minutes doesn’t mean it needs to become a project with a giant imaginary WRITE POST!! attached to it.

A lot of those ideas can sit in Reference until they turn into something.

See, my problem isn’t that I don’t have ideas. It’s finding-the-damn-thing-again.

Doing all this reminded me why I came up with the Papa Sandemano mascot. It fits.

From the outside it looks like absolute chaos. Recipes, garden stuff, blog ideas, house projects, books, jars, tools, probably a D20 buried under something.

All you have to do is ask if Papa knows where something is.

“Oh that? Yeah, third pile from the left, under the fermentation notes.”

Papa Sandemano, fueled by coffee, curiosity, and far too many unfinished ideas.

I’m never going to become the guy with the perfectly clean system and three neatly labelled folders. Too much work for very little payoff. Besides, it’s not someone else’s system. It’s mine.

I just need the chaos to make sense to me.

And maybe, for once, I’ll be able to find the damn thing again when I go looking for it.

September 26, 2026
Ingredienti Test #1: Barilla Gluten-Free Penne

GET TO THE POINT, PAPA:
Pasta is a big deal in our house, and now it needs to be gluten-free. First up: Barilla Gluten-Free Penne. Would it fly with the family? Yep. Everybody ate it, the Sous annihilated it, and the leftovers reheated well. We’re buying it again.

Now, onto the rest of the story.

Gluten-free pasta wasn’t something I worried much about professionally.

If someone couldn’t eat gluten, there were other things on the menu. Pasta could simply be avoided.

At home, pasta is a big part of how we eat, and our Family Sauce is a big fucking deal. I’ve been chasing the dream of making that sauce taste like Nonna’s for years. “Just don’t have pasta” ain’t gonna fly.

So now I need to figure out gluten-free pasta. Not a sad, “Here dear—eat this compromise and pretend it’s okay.”

I’ve cooked pasta professionally and at home for decades, so I know what I expect from it. Take the wheat out, though, and I’m basically starting over.

Rather than assume gluten-free pasta is good, bad, or something we just have to tolerate, I’m going to test the shit on the entire family. The question is—will it fly?

First up: Barilla Gluten-Free Penne.

What I’m Working With

Barilla Gluten-Free Penne
340 g
Rice flour + corn flour
$3.77 at Walmart in Saint-Eustache

The box says 10 minutes for al dente, 11 if you want it more tender.

Tonight, I’m serving it with our Family Sauce—which seems like a pretty fair fucking test. If gluten-free pasta is going to work in this house, it needs to work here.

The Plan

I usually cook 500 g in one go (so we have leftovers). I’m starting with the same baseline, so roughly one-and-a-half times the 340 g box for the four of us.

I’ll taste it as it cooks, see how close the box directions are to what I actually consider al dente, and pay attention to the texture, flavour and how well it holds the sauce.

Then I’m serving it to the family. The plan is to treat it just like any other pasta—use the pasta water and Parmesan, and toss it until you hear the sounds of amore.

I don’t need gluten-free pasta that’s pretty good for gluten-free pasta. I want pasta we can put on the table without feeling like we’re eating the consolation-prize version of supper.

The Test

Update (like, only six days later—what do you want? I remembered.)

The Barilla Gluten-Free Penne got its shot with the Family Sauce, and it passed.

Mrs. Sandemano liked it. The Kid liked it. The Sous demolished his bowl, went back for another one, and later raided the leftovers.

The scene of the crime. The evidence: a pot of Barilla Gluten-Free Penne with Family Sauce

If you know me, you know that, of course, I also changed the sauce. What did you think was gonna happen, after my trip to Italy?

But that’s not the point. They were eating the new sauce, and nobody complained about the pasta. In fact, they only asked after the fact whether or not it was gluten-free.

So, the noodles held up, they carried the sauce, and a bonus—the leftovers reheated nicely. They weren’t sad gluten-free pasta leftovers the next day.

And that’s the whole test, right?

Could we eat this? Would we enjoy it? Of course.

Papa Notes

One thing I’m already curious about is the package size. At 340 g, one box works out to 85 g each for four people. I’m used to figuring roughly 100 g of dry pasta per person, usually making a little extra for leftovers.

So before I’ve even boiled the water, there’s Test #1:

Why is the fucking box only 340 g?

Portioning: 500 g worked out basically the same as regular pasta for us — about five portions, with only a little left over. That means three boxes (1020 g) cover two meals made with 500 g.

September 20, 2026
Lacto-Fermented Pickles, Batch #2: Problem Solved. Problem Relocated.

Remember (a few posts back) about those lacto-fermented pickles I made? Yeah—not a success.

Batch #1 came out technically pickle-shaped, technically fermented, and pretty fucking insipid. I threw some apple cider vinegar into the jar in an attempt to rescue them and gave the whole experiment about a 5/10.

Naturally, my response was:

Okay. Let’s do this again.

~Papa Sandemano

But before Batch #2, I went looking to see how other people were doing this.

I pulled out Joshua Weissman’s An Unapologetic Cookbook and looked at his recipe for lacto-fermented vegetables. I wasn’t really looking for another recipe to copy. I wanted to see what he was doing differently—and whether that might explain why Batch #1 had been so fucking insipid.

Then I worked through it with ChatGPT using my own notes from Batch #1, comparing what I’d done, what Weissman was doing, and what I actually wanted to change. Between the book, my notes, and a lot of back-and-forth, I came up with a process for Batch #2 that made sense to me.

Or at least, that was the plan.

A few weeks later, I finally got around to it.

I had another batch of Costco cucumbers (less than three bucks—a steal), and while I was hunting for 1-litre jars big enough for my pickle pipes, I stumbled across these cool fucking flip-top jars I’d been wanting to try, and to prove to Mrs. Sandemano that there was a point to owning so many of these.

I figured, why not? The pickles fit. It’s got a seal, they’re easier to burp, and it’s less hassle. Right?

Cool. Rock on.

So I started loading everything in. Measured the spices, added the garlic, packed in the cucumbers and filled the jar with water.

Which is when I realized I’d designed myself a pretty fucking stupid process.

I needed the weight of the water so I could calculate the salt for the brine. Which meant I now had to pour the water back out of a jar I’d already filled with dill, coriander seeds, garlic and cucumbers.

Fine. Strain it, weigh the water, calculate the salt, whisk it together and pour the brine back in.

Except I was making two jars.

And on the second one, I forgot the fucking strainer.

So now I’m standing there whisking salt into a bowl of water with dill and coriander seeds swimming around in it, thinking:

There has got to be a less stupid way to do this. ~every time a good cook learns how to do a new task

And there is.

I could have just weighed the fucking spices and garlic first, accounted for that weight, and saved myself this entire exercise.

Lesson learned.

Anyway. Brine made. Pickles packed.

Then the fucking cucumbers (and spices) started floating.

Fuck!

I hadn’t thought about that.

The cucumbers wanted to come up. The dill and coriander seeds wanted to come up. And I suddenly realized that these cool fucking flip-top jars had one fairly significant disadvantage:

I had absolutely nothing to keep this shit under the brine.

So now I’m troubleshooting live. I remembered reading that you could use a Ziploc bag filled with brine as an improvised fermentation weight. Fine. I’ve got Ziploc bags. I figured that Gemini could give me the quick low-down.

After a ten-minute dive into a rabbit hole, I came out the other end with indeed—you could use Ziploc bags as an impromptu fermentation weight—the caveat is you need to ensure there’s fresh brine inside as the weight. (This way, if the bag breaks you’re safe.)

Easy. In goes the bag.

Cucumbers down. Spices mostly down. A massive pain-in-the-ass to close, brine everywhere.

Fuck it! Good enough! Problem solved.~ Papa Sandemano

Or, as it turns out, problem relocated.

A couple of days later, I noticed the jars were leaking brine.

Every time I messed with the lids, I seemed to lose a little more, so eventually I put the jars on a pizza pan, covered the whole thing with a towel and left the lids open rather than constantly burping them.

Then I left them alone to ferment.

On Day 5, I came back to check them.

Jar #1 looked pretty much like I’d left it.

Jar #2 did not. When I opened the lid, my brain saw (with a little imaginative help from Firefly)

Sometimes the experiment answers the question you forgot to ask.

Uh oh.

There, sitting right at the surface amongst the floating spices, was a nice little fuzzy white patch. This is what I really saw :

Mold. So much for “problem solved.” ~ Papa Sandemano

Well, fuck.

Jar #2 was done. I’m adventurous, not stupid. That one was going in the bin.

Jar #1 didn’t have the same fuzzy patch, so I dealt with the frothy shit floating at the surface, got everything submerged again and decided to see where it goes. This time I was taking no chances, and seeing if the ramekin I’m using as a weight will work out.

Which left me wondering what the fuck had actually gone wrong. Too many variables at once?

And then, because apparently the universe has a sense of humour, I went downstairs.

So, I’m putting stuff away and finally decide it’s time to throw out the Mutti bottles I’d been saving for passata. (Fuck it. I’ll use Mason jars.)

And sitting there was a neatly tied plastic bag. Guess what’s inside?

Two 1-litre wide-mouth Mason jars.

For those of you saying (rightly) “You have got to be fucking kidding me…” in my defense, I forgot that before we left for vacation back in June, my mother-in-law had sent these home with Mrs. Sandemano for me. I’d put them downstairs because I already had all those Mutti bottles and figured I probably wouldn’t need them.

These were the exact fucking jars I’d been looking for when I started Batch #2. The ones that fit the pickle pipes I already own.

Of course they were sitting in my basement the whole fucking time.

So, yeah. There will be a Batch #3.

Same experiment. Fewer variables.

One-litre wide-mouth Mason jars. Pickle pipes.

As for Jar #1 of Batch #2? As the French say—À venir!

September 12, 2026
Papa’s Knife

The other day I helped a family with their annual passata tradition. I had an ulterior motive: making passata has been on my bucket list for years, and I wanted to learn how they did it.

While we were working, I remembered seeing a Facebook reel about the “Nonno Knife” and thinking it was amusing.

Why are you telling me this, Papa? Well, the Nonno in this operation used a cheap supermarket paring knife.

What do you know? It looks like the reel was true! He was literally using a “Nonno knife.”

So I get home, and guess what? Despite owning a roll of stupidly expensive professional knives (including a $100 paring knife, but NOT a Japanese knife, at least)—the knife I’ve used for most tasks over the last 25+ years is a cheap one I got for free from a kitchen renovation.

Somehow, after all these years, I have a Nonno knife.

But since I’m not a Nonno (yet), let’s just call it “Papa’s Knife.”

The knife I actually use.

September 7, 2026
Batch #1: Lacto Pickles — 5/10. Did I Screw Them Up, or Do I Just Not Like Lacto-Fermented Pickles?

UPDATE — September 12, 2026

Apparently this experiment wasn’t finished fucking with me.

I was about to throw these pickles out today and decided to taste one first. After another couple of weeks sitting in the vinegar, they’ve actually improved.

The Sous tried them too, and we came to the same conclusion: they’re better. They’re funky, but in a good way. The only problem is that the apple cider vinegar flavour has taken over.

Batch #1, two weeks later. Apparently I wasn’t done with these fucking things yet.

So Batch #1 isn’t going in the garbage after all.

It’s becoming dill pickle relish.

I’ll take the win.

Meanwhile, I tried Batch #2. That went… differently.

Back to the original post:

Remember when I finally stopped letting Costco cucumbers die on my counter and made lacto-fermented pickles?

I was pretty excited about them.

I checked them daily, and found myself skimming the top because of some wild yeast.

A little over a week ago, I decided I wasn’t going to fuck around with the yeast growth anymore. I’d done some research, bounced what I was seeing off Gemini, and everything seemed normal enough—but I’d reached the limit of how adventurous I felt like being. I kept thinking, “I do not want to fuck these up.”

A little over a week in. I’d fucked around with fermentation long enough. Into the fridge.

Only one problem to fix before we could call this test done. I still had to eat one. It took another day to work up the nerve:

Well, They’re Pickles. 4/10 for flavour.

I don’t know if I fucked them up—or if I’m just not used to that flavour.

Nothing about them screamed failure. Maybe I’m just expecting that sharp, vinegary deli pickle you get beside a burger.

Dill. Garlic. Salt. Crunch. Vinegar.

These weren’t that.

After Mrs Sandemano’s taste test—she caught me red-handed eating these straight out of the jar—we agreed they were missing acid more than anything.

So I added two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and put them back in the fridge. Hopefully, they’d improve.

A couple of days later, I tried another one.

Don’t worry, the white webbing is “Stomata & Lenticels!” It’s fine.

Ehh…5/10?

They’re better. The vinegar got them a little closer to what my brain apparently thinks a pickle is supposed to taste like.

Still, I’m not exactly standing here thinking, fuck yeah, check out this pickle.

I also noticed this weird white webbing on the skin.

Which made me wonder if I’d managed to grow something new and exciting.

I looked it up with Gemini. Apparently it’s “stomata and lenticels”—part of the cucumber itself. I had to double-check that because the explanation sounded like bullshit.

I’d bore you with the extensive rabbit hole, but you can go down that one yourself. Stomata & lenticels. Apparently it’s a whole thing. I learned something.

An extreme close-up showing what it is! Stomata and lenticels! Apparently.

Also, reflecting on it—shit. Salt. I added more liquid to an already-established brine without adding any more salt, which means I also changed the salt concentration.

Did that matter at this point, especially once they were refrigerated? I don’t know yet.

So rather than continue standing in my kitchen suspiciously eating pickles by myself, I’m taking them to a party tonight.

Verdict à venir. Maybe I fucked up the pickles. Maybe I need to get used to lacto-fermented pickles. Or maybe there’s something interesting in the middle.

Either way, I’m apparently making more pickles.

August 29, 2026
Basil Guild

If you’re looking for advice on how to buy basil, this ain’t it. We’re talking about growing basil by accident, a quick fix, and pretending like I meant to do it the whole time.

Last year I had a hot pepper guild — two jalapeños, two habaneros in an enormous pot, and they crushed it. I tried to overwinter the pepper plants — and I killed them. Classic.

This year I went on vacation in late June and never got around to replanting the pot. When I got back, it was overgrown — except one thing was thriving in there on its own: a Thai basil plant, self-seeded from a bucket plant I’d let go to seed the year before. Nobody planted it. It just showed up and took over.

The overgrown jungle before I touched it—can you see the Thai basil on the left?

So I ripped everything else out, left the Thai basil where it stood, and planted a store-bought basil plant I’d divided. Mulched the whole thing with dried grass clippings. Then, mostly, left it alone.

Thai basil isolated and the rest cleared out

A store-bought overgrown basil plant—cost $6

The new guild together – Thai basil with its basil buddies

Dried grass mulch sets up this basil guild nicely

“Mostly” is doing some work in that sentence. I’ve been pinching the tops and especially the flowers off both plants the whole season. My theory — which may be complete bullshit — is that basil’s basically a weed, and weeds get eaten by wildlife and just push out more growth to compensate. So pinching it is me doing the wildlife’s job. Keeps it vegetative instead of bolting to seed and quitting on me.

A few days later after the plant had settled in, looking a bit haggard

Aug 9 and the basil guild is looking beautiful

Whatever the reason, it worked. The Thai basil came back harder than I expected — I’m honestly still a little shocked it’s there at all — and the divided basil filled in right alongside it. Two completely different flavor profiles sharing one pot, no drama.

Aug 21 and this basil guild is producing nicely

I’ve been using it hard this summer — cherry Roma tomato and zucchini braise being the one my wife and I keep coming back to. I’m also trying to figure out an Asian-style pesto for ramen night, alongside a regular one. If I’m growing it, I’m going to use it.

Freshly picked basil ready to make the zucchini and tomato braise

Next year? No idea if I run it back the same way or switch it up. But I like how this went, and honestly — this an example of what “being an artist” looks like from where I sit. A pot, an accident, and something worth eating at the end of it.

August 22, 2026
Garlic Bulbils

When I made the decision to “leave a few scapes go to flower,” little did I know that not only could I still use the garlic cloves, but the flower heads would produce these beautiful garlic bulbils.

Garlic flower full of bulbils

Here’s the game plan: (freshly researched through Gemini, Claude, vetted by YouTube videos and, well, whatever)

I keep these in a dry space (my basement cellar should do) until I plant them in late October. It’ll take two years to produce full garlic heads. This is the long game, if Gemini is to be believed.

Garlic bulbils in my hand

Also, as an aside, I just learned you can use garlic bulbils in pickles — you don’t even have to peel them. Maybe worth exploring more bulbils for the future.

August 17, 2026
The Great Lacto-Fermented Pickle Experiment Begins
Every year it’s the same—I buy a bag of Mucci mini cucumbers from Costco (when they’re under $3, always a good idea in theory) and every year they go soft and sad on the counter before I actually do anything with them. They always end up like this:

Unfortunately gone rotten despite Mrs Sandemano’s persistent inquiries on what I’m going to do with them.

This time, no more excuses. Fermented pickles, finally, and a real question to answer while I’m at it: does a fancy Pickle Pipe airlock actually make a difference, or is daily burping just as good?

So I set up two jars side by side. Same cucumbers, same brine, same everything — except one is a real canning jar that has a proper self-venting Pickle Pipe lid, and the other is a repurposed Putter’s jar with a plain lid that I’ll have to burp by hand. Whichever one wins, I want to actually know. (Also, it has absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing debate with Mrs Sandemano whether we ought to keep my collection of empty jars.)

The setup (Day 0) :
- Mucci mini cucumbers, ends trimmed about 1/8”
Blossom ends of mini cukes?
- One clove of garlic per jar, and not just any garlic — the first of the season from my own garden.
This is my first ever garlic I grew
- A big pinch of pickling spice in each jar (scientific measurement: thumb and two fingers, roughly 1 tsp).
Pickling spice I use this year
- A few fresh dill fronds.
Rescued from a bunch that was on its last legs, after diligently awaiting in the refrigerator for me to finally follow through on this project.
- Two 1L jars: one repurposed pickle jar with a solid lid, one wide-mouth jar from Walmart that happens to fit a Pickle Pipe perfectly.
One pickle pipe jar and a repurposed pickle jar

The brine (and a small math incident) :

Target was a 2.5% salt brine. I weighed the water from both jars combined: 744g. Then I did the percentage math and got 1.8g—a number so small it looked wrong. I consulted Gemini, and found out it was because I’d added an extra decimal place. No sweat, multiplied the result by 10, landed on 18.6g of pickling salt, rounded up to 19g.

“Ah yes, precision.”

—Papa Sandemano

I dissolved the 19g into the full 744g of water in one bowl, whisking until it went clear, then split it back evenly between the two jars, leaving about 1cm of headspace in each.

Lids on, jars tucked onto the counter out of direct sun.

Day 1:

Curiosity got the better of me, and even now the smell promises something amazing to come.

Nothing to report yet — no cloudiness, no bubbles, nothing dramatic. Just me, checking on two silent jars like they owe me an update. Stoked. Almost impatient. This is apparently just what fermentation day 1 is: waiting for something to happen while a garlic clove sits there doing absolutely nothing to prove it either.

Next check-in whenever the brine starts doing something interesting. Which — fingers crossed — should be soon.
August 16, 2026
Garlic Bulbils and Leftover Mint

Two things currently sitting on my counter that Mrs. Sandemano keeps bugging me about (and I’m not entirely sure what to do with.)

The garlic bulbils are from my first year growing garlic, so they’re completely new territory for me. Eat them? Plant them? Pickle them? All of the above?

And then there’s the eternal problem of buying mint: you need six leaves and somehow come home with a small shrub. It’s so much, I just threw half of it away.

Half of the bunch ends up here

Surely there’s something better to do with the rest than watch it slowly die in the fridge. I’m thinking drinks, sauces, preserving it? Or maybe trying to propagate a few stems so I can stop buying the shit altogether.

Some already rooting, and the rest for a zucchini salad later

Experiments forthcoming.

August 15, 2026
Help Papa! You’re this garlic’s only hope!

Look, let me start off by saying that Hugel (short for hügelkultur—a complex German word that Siri hates) knows abuse in its five years. Last year’s tomatoes produced as much as my neglect could allow. I told myself last October (okay, early November) that the sixteen cloves of garlic would give me a great start. Of course, I neglected it completely, right up until June 19th, when I stood in the yard cutting scapes with one eye on the clock because I had a flight to catch. I made a conscious call not to pull the nettles — I wanted to see what they’d do, maybe forage them eventually.

Anyway, after a 24 day vacation, I’m not sure what I expected coming back. How would me garlic fare, sir?

Approaching the gate I did not expect the nettles I’d “eventually harvest” to grow nine feet tall in three and a half weeks. Standing at the gate, all I could think was: did I fuck this up? Again?

Look at those stinging nettles! They’re like “I didn’t know they grew that fucking tall” tall.

So, I’m no idiot, I know the Stinging Nettles gotta go, and a quick Gemini check tells me I don’t have to worry, it’s a good thing they’re there because it means Hugel is doing better than I thought. Sure. I’ll go with that. All I’d have to do to rescue that garlic? Just clear six inches around them.

“Just clear around the garlic?” Hey buddy, can you find it? No sweat right? It’s somewhere in this epic clusterfuck!

Okay—I had already pulled a garlic bulb a couple days ago, out of curiosity, before I’d even started this whole rescue operation. Now I know the garlic is doing alright in Hugel. But where was it?

My first garlic—small, a little rounder than expected. I was so excited that I washed
the dirt off, and trimmed the roots.

No big deal cleaning out the “Ortiche.” (That’s the Italian word for Stinging Nettles and I’m using it so I can pretend like I’m growing them on purpose.) The good news? Now it was easier to see where that garlic was, they’re almost ready, and if we can save them from being choked out

There’s garlic falling over in there so we’re on the right track.

No-grow zone dealt with, less clusterfuck. All I had to do was mercilessly clear around each garlic plant. Oh, and keep some of the good Ortiche so they’ll regrow around Hugel.

I’m not going to keep the Ortiche that grows along the old wood fence. I need to walk around Hugel.

While removing the rejected Ortiche, I started thinking of how I learned that family back in Italy pay good money for it, but here I’m getting them for free. Also wild physalis trying its best to overtake everything. I’ve wondered how can I take advantage of both for free food. I had to come up with a plan.

The plan. Yellow and red = no grow, blue is for Ortiche. I’ll figure out Hugel later.

Seeing it’s a well-intentioned plan—it’s one-hundred percent “we’ll see.” NGL the progress at this point was enough motivation to tackle the next issue: That garlic needs six inches of cleared area.

Give that garlic the six inches it so desperately needs!

With the garlic’s competition weeded out (ahem), I left a couple physalis bushes, and Ortiche stumps. I don’t want to squander free produce, and Gemini has a couple ideas for how to best manage them.

Bonus! Garlic + Free berries and greens!

I like to get down to the ground level and give my growing area a good look. I read that we give that garlic six inches clearance so they dry in the heat. Apparently this will harden the bulbs.

I repeat: Some of them are falling over, which is supposed to be a good sign.

I fucked up cutting the scapes—pre-airport haste— and let four go to flower. Apparently they make a pretty flower, and can attract some good pollinators. It’s fascinating to see the bulb sway in the wind. Shouldn’t be too hard to capture on my iPhone.

No! The BULB! FOCUS ON THE BULB!

I tried to get in a close-up so you’d see the flower bulb is starting to split. The wind was not cooperating, and this is the best shot.

Yeah! Maybe if I hold it…COME ON!

It’s hard to get a decent focus on the flower for this picture, and this was the closest I could get. You can see the tiny little bulbils, even if they are a little out of focus.

The best focus I can get. Those little structures inside this flower are called bulbils

These pictures are beautiful enough that I had to send them to Gemini for a deep dive. Now I want to use these bulbils to make even more garlic. I just have to figure out how.

July 24, 2026