Rhubarb

Every spring, I get curious about my rhubarb. I find the old dead stem base from the prior year and poke through the slimy brown rotten stems, looking for the little green bud. Then it always surprises me by showing up somewhere totally unexpected. This year it appeared on the 10th of May.



The next day, I saw leaves underneath, and realized that what I had seen the prior day was a carapace, with the bud underneath:

(Wow look at all the birch pollen!)

I also saw it had two siblings:


I guess I will separate them and replant them elsewhere when they are older, although I had been planning to get another rhubarb of a different type, to add some rhubarb biodiversity. I guess "lots of rhubarb" is just one of those things one lives with.