Planted the Rhubarb

Today I planted the rhubarb, and they must be relieved. I noticed that the one in the big pot has been doing a lot better than the one in the small pot. They were also looking a tad dry, poor things. However, this morning as I was doing dumbbell presses in the kitchen, I saw a video that inspired me to go out at once and make them a proper home. 

Here's the video:

The proper home is the raised bed beside the ivy-bound shed, between the black current bushes. One section has been covered with cardboard for several months and the other was a riot of sweet-smelling weeds. I did sow that bit with lettuce and rainbow chard, but it was really not to be. Really, that bed is useless for tender things. 

Anyway, I lifted the cardboard and pulled out the weeds,  turned over the dirt, got some leaf mould, dug it in, watered the whole, and put in my poor thirty rhubarb plants. Then I watered them again. They must think, in their plantish way, that they are in heaven--or at very least a lovely spa. 

 

Speaking of recovery, the latest rumour I heard is that Cardinal Burke is responding well to treatment, so hoorah! Keep the prayers going, as it would seem they are working (as it were). I brought up the issue of the dodgey concept of changing God's mind at theology school, and it was explained to me that by praying  we participate in God's will for the person, which is what God has invited us to do. 

To return to gardens, today I will make another apple crumble---if Benedict Ambrose goes out and picks me another lot of the six ripest. If it were a holiday I would bake a tarte tartin, but making puff pastry is too much of a challenge today. Our local Tesco doesn't have all-butter puff pastry, so perhaps it would be a good idea to pick up some the next time we are in Waitrose. (Cue angelic harps.) 

Poor Benedict Ambrose has promised to mow the lawn next week when he has finished his current diploma assignments, but this morning I was half-seriously thinking of buying a scythe. Now that's old school. Then, when I was enjoying myself making a home for the rhubarb, I gazed over the grass and pondered putting in six raised beds for more vegetables. This way, we'd have more vegetables and less lawn for B.A. to mow. We'd have to keep some lawn, for like everyone else around we dry our laundry outdoors whenever possible. 

I don't want to get carried away, however, as all the permaculture videos I've been have featured either California or Australia. Sure you can grow almost all your food in a suburban yard in Australia. Serious food gardening in Scotland involves polytunnels and horticultural fleece, and as they are made from plastic, I disapprove of them---for me, that is, not for the professional farmers.