The green shoots of recovery

As part of my continuing programme to occasionally look on the Mr Brightside: Things Can Only Get Better.

Somebody grab Osborne! The first green shoots of recovery are visible and becoming stronger every day. Missed by the national press and ignored locally - I am able to confirm evidence of growth against the current gloomy backdrop. Hope! It counts for a lot and when things look particularly bleak, you have to hold on to any sign of regeneration, no matter how unpalatable. That is joy of rhubarb.

What can rhubarb teach us? One of the many pleasant aspects of having an allotment is that during the worst part of the year, when the cold is as bitter as the Christmas credit card bills, without fail, the rhubarb provides a gentle counterpoint to the general decay and desolation. Spring may still be months away and the Bathavonton growing season, on the dark side of the valley, even further away, but my rhubarb provides just enough encouragement to get me out and start preparing our vegetable plot for another year.

Ironic that it's rhubarb. Not the most fashionable vegetable. Yes, vegetable. Only in New York - thanks to a legal case that was fought to uphold a tax dodge, is rhubarb legally a fruit. But surely a fruit in all but name - Laura Ingall Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame called it the "pie plant" - how else do we eat it, if not accompanied by a ton of sugar and preferably with a crumble topping? But it's not everybody's first choice.

I remember being completely shocked to be offered a rhubarb dessert only minutes after my older cousins had explained that it was the most poisonous thing in the garden...and my parents were encouraging me to eat it! After this close shave with death I made it a policy for the next twenty years or so to avoid all contact with rhubarb. Unless you are from the 'Rhubarb Triangle' of Leeds, Morley and Wakefield - where rhubarb,  grown in dark sheds, grows so fast you can hear it and they pick it by candlelight - it's unlikely the thought of rhubarb provokes too many strong feelings, apart from a slight sense of guilt.

Unlike everything else, which needs regular love and attention, my two rhubarb plants seem to thrive with no help from me at all. They die with the first frosts, completely disappear, and then break out again each year with renewed vigour despite me devoting no time at all to their care. And that first crumble tastes so good. Especially because you have done nothing to deserve it. It's like a payment on account for all those more needy crops you'll lose to pests and diseases.

What an advance it is. By April, when hardly anything else is growing out of the greenhouse, you will be completely overwhelmed. I admit, the children can become mutinous. Even I have a limit. Thank goodness, therefore, that friends and family love being given rhubarb (as long as they don't have their own rhubarb plants, of course). They love it and, if you check out the price in the supermarkets, they think they are getting a bargain too. Only the slight twitch and relief on my face would give the game away. Oh, and writing a post about it.

I don't pretend to have any great aspirations for my allotment, beyond moments like these. Despite my regular Felicity Kendal fantasies, we'll never be self-sufficient, I don't really understand the technicalities of organic growing, although I try not to use any chemicals and I would really love to learn to just grow vaguely recognisable produce. We ate the last of our Savoy cabbage, leeks and parsnips last week and, given my time, seeds and a few bits kit, I suspect that they were not much cheaper than the supermarket.

I'm not sure that is the point. Those veggies gave the family and I a lot of pleasure; from planting to my four year old washing the last of the rather deformed looking parsnips, it beat watching the TV or any of the indulgences to which I am far too easily prone. There was quite a lot of work involved and hope this doesn't sound too trite but it felt like there was something human about the process. Why? Because whether it is growing veggies, making a pot of jam of some produce or simply having a chat with the other plotholders, I felt like we were creating and not consuming. These days that is possibly one of the biggest political statements you can make.

Got to go, that nice down to earth Old Etonian, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, has made a new TV series based on his latest book about his exploits about buying a farm in Dorset.