ritzy rhubarb

This summer calls for rhubarb.

Upper Midwest U.S. grows rhubarb without even trying. It grows better than people. It grows better than weeds. Mow over it and it grows. The beautiful ruby color branching into large ruffly green leaves. So tart it surprises you every bite. So made of summer barefoot in rich, garden earthness.

I don't live there anymore. I have to accept this.

I have hesitated every western summer to purchase rhubarb, even from the farmers' market, because I wasn't there to make sure it had the loving, glorious growing time it needed.

I will trust in local farmers' this summer. I will embrace their rhubarb and welcome all the local sweet, biting tastiness.



I wish I could weave fabric out of memories of the spring where I was nine and the snirt was piling in the gutters, the snow was melting into crusty white ice and large puddles in my back yard and it was lovely enough to play outside wearing that hoodless, oversized, green sweatshirt and those fuchsia boots.That would be the stripe next to the times I would lay in the grass and listen to the bird coo in the evenings and the back screen door swing shut. The garage door you had to slam shut with all your strength and force open by knocking it with your hip. My barefeet on the decomposing sidewalk. That rainbow that went on forever in the warm greyish sky and we all stood in the driveway looking at it. Those plastic clips with the poodles and bows my dad would let me clip into his orange hair. The mornings my mom would don her sun hat, that blue shirt with the leaf pattern; kneel on her green knee cushion and weed. I'd join her and we'd smell like bug spray together and the mosquitoes would circle us and I'd squeal and run away everytime I saw a spider and my mom would wonder what was going to become of me.
Those irises.
Chives.
Humidity.

Someday I'll live in a house and have a garden at my elbow and a healthy lawn to squish my toes in.

I would like that time to also have a husband and maybe even a family but that's a secret you'll never hear me say out loud. À haute voix.