Rhubarb season

The other day I walked to the side of my yard and something caught my attention. There, on the ground, close to the house were the first signs of my rhubarb patch sprouting up from the ground.  

Ah, yes. Glorious rhubarb.  

I must admit I've developed a love-hate relationship with rhubarb and you really can't say you know me until you know these details. 

Let's start with the plant itself. I didn't plant it, it came with the house. In fact, no one in history has ever planted rhubarb, it just comes with houses and people eat it. Look it up. 

Rhubarb requires no effort. It grows, you pick it, it grows back, you pick it again, it snows, the rhubarb spends the entire winter thinking of ways to grow sooner next year. You don't prepare the ground for rhubarb, it prefers to grow out of dirt, but will grow out of concrete slabs if necessary. You don't water rhubarb and you don't talk to rhubarb. You simply pass by every few days and say, "Are you kidding me? How could you possibly have grown that much since I last looked?" 

Rhubarb patches cannot be destroyed. When I was a kid, our rhubarb patch was in the middle of our backyard toboggan hill and doubled as first base in warmer months. We slid over it over and ran through it thousands of times a year and the rhubarb was never affected. Rhubarb patches will live forever and scientists should spend more time studying rhubarb DNA, specifically the "live forever" part. 

There are two ways to eat rhubarb-raw and with massive amounts of sugar. The taste of raw rhubarb is too sour for human beings so I would recommend the massive amount of sugar option. When you think you have enough sugar, you don't. Trust me. 

My wife doesn't enjoy the taste of rhubarb and refuses to eat it. I could lie to myself and say I'll make rhubarb pies and rhubarb tarts and just simply stick rhubarb stalks into sugar dishes until my teeth rot, but none of that is ever going to happen. So, I give my rhubarb away to my mother and my sister. 

My mother has taught me all that I know about rhubarb and perhaps all there is to know about rhubarb. She tells me I need to pull it out by grabbing it near the bottom of the stalk and just pull. She repeats the "just pull" part, likely figuring the second mention will prevent me from cutting down the rhubarb with an axe, or harvesting only the poisonous leaves. She also taught me that rhubarb is only good for the first few months of the growing season, so it should be noted that each year will only produce about 75 arm-fulls of rhubarb or enough to make 900 or so pies. 

My sister lives close by and will sometimes just take the rhubarb without asking. It grows so fast, there is only a 10 minute window where you will know that any of it has been taken and all rhubarb stealers know this. 

Between the two of them, they take more rhubarb than they can use themselves and give some away to other family members. If I'm ever at a family function where rhubarb is served, there's a good chance it came from my patch. People make a fuss over me as though I am in some way responsible for the quality of the rhubarb... 

If they only knew.