Rhubarb Enhancement

So I have now divided my rhubarb. Actually I should have done this some time back, during the winter, but seeing as we haven't really had much of a winter and the plant has been growing pretty much throughout, I don't think it's much of a problem. Having not done this before, I was in for an interesting time.

The main thing I hadn't realised was just how much of the plant there would be underground. I found a fibrous mass a bit larger than a football (but a lot heavier) and a number of cable-like roots heading off in all directions, including downwards. Basically, there was no way I was shifting that beast. With excavations all around the plant I decided to get heavy and shove the spade in to split the root/stem mass were it sat. A little later I had four hefty new crowns, two of which I replanted right away (the whole point of this is so in future I can force one plant for an early crop and let the other develop naturally), one I gave to a neighbour, and another is promised to friends on the other side of town. I was also left with a small piece which I have potted up for the time being, pending some better idea of what to do with it.

Now only time will tell if I have managed to kill off my lovely rhubarb plant or if I have improved the productivity of my garden and also made some other people happy. The whole process felt more destructive than anything, but I get the impression that rhubarb is one of those resilient plants which are hard to kill. Fingers crossed...

Whalesong and Bananas

As of the end of last week we have a new Sainsbury's superstore near us and on the opening day staff were handing out maps to help customers find what they were looking for among the many aisles. All well and good until you see how some of the aisles are marked on the map. Sure, plenty of people will be looking for "frozen wellbeing" (who wouldn't?), but I can't remember the last time I went into a shop looking for "ambient fruit".

Actually, I'm sure I have shopped for ambient fruit: the aisle marked as such contained tinned, bottled, snack-packed and otherwise ready-to-eat, non-fresh fruit, so I can only assume that this is grocer-speak for fruit stored at ambient temperatures, or something like that, but honestly, what rubbish!

From Alabama

So I've gone and bought myself a new instrument to learn to play. I was given a ukulele for Christmas, which has had me happily learning a few basic chords, and then spotted this on eBay...

It was listed as a ukulele, and it's the same size as one, but closer inspection showed that there were double courses for the strings and there were eight tuning pegs, despite the fact that it only had four strings at the time. Yup, this was a form of mandolin-banjo: looks like a banjo, but strung like a mandolin. What the hell, I thought, so I put in a bid — and won.

So yesterday I fitted some new strings (a full set of mandolin strings) to the little beastie, tuned up, worked out the fingering, and a few hours later I was playing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and a couple of other very simple tunes. Very slowly.

The woodwork is poorly varnished and the banjo head bit is damaged and needs replacing, but it doesn't sound too bad, and seems to hold its tuning pretty well. It's another fun toy which I should be able to learn the basics of over the coming months, and looks wonderfully "distressed", which seems appropriate for a folkie instrument. And, of course, it's another instrument that nobody takes seriously (though it's a very short step from that to a number of other instruments, like the tenor banjo or octave mandolin).