Rhubarblife cycle
This is a strange, dramatic plant. It slides up through the dirt in the early spring in a round, red fist. It also looks like a head, The rhubarb is weirdly human-like when it first breaks through the surface. The membranes on this reddish green ball are taut, and they stretch and part and begin to open -- the resemblance to human birth is startling. The leaves are inside, tightly wound, fully formed leaves in miniature form, leaves that will eventually open up to be over a foot wide.
From the oddest beginning, they unfurl and open up into huge, stately plants, filling the entire back corner of the garden. Watching them grow all the way through unfurling, to flowering and then to seed, is a fascinating cycle all summer long. I harvest and cook a few of the stems, but mostly I like to lie down on the ground and look under the leaves into the shady, red-stemmed, under-leaf worlds. One summer I picked a huge leaf and watched it change colors as it died, revealing the beautiful, magical world of cell networks on the inside.