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The Rural Voice, 1996-06, Page 45Life is not as sour as it seems in the rhubarb patch BY ALMA BARKMAN We found the sow sitting in the scattered remains of the rhubarb patch, systematically munching down the stalks. Little did the ancient prophet Isaiah realize how aptly he had described a typical rhubarb patch when he wrote, "In the day you plant it you carefully fence it in .. . but the harvest will be a heap." Truer words were never spoken. When I was growing up, the rhubarb patch started out as one solitary hill in the corner of the garden. As fate would have it, that rhubarb was not destined to remain single, as we discovered the day someone forgot to close the garden gate. It may be "the little foxes that 42 THE RURAL VOICE spoil the vines," but it was our big old brood sow who uprooted the rhubarb. We found her sitting in the scattered remains of the patch with a puckered snout, systematically munching down the stalks. My mother despaired of ever again having any rhubarb, but a week or two later, not one, but six or more hills of rhubarb sprang up at random. Thereafter we endured a steady diet of the stuff — rhubarb pie, rhubarb pudding, rhubarb cake (upside down and right side up), rhubarb relish, rhubarb jelly and rhubarb jam. When I was absolutely famished I would even compromise my principles and eat stalks of raw rhubarb dipped in sugar — lots of sugar. But still the rhubarb patch never got any smaller. I began to see that rhubarb, like the human spirit, is practically indestructible. It can be pounded to a pulp by a July hailstorm, flattened by an August tornado, wilted to a stringy pith by a heat wave, flooded out in spring by a flash runoff and frozen stiff in winter, yet it always recovers, and surprisingly soon at that. One thing was certain, I knew: if I ever had a garden of my own, I was not going to grow rhubarb. Ignoring it simply proved counter- productive. I soon learned that to deliberately exclude rhubarb from a Canadian garden is paramount to committing horticultural apostasy, and such a sin of omission was viewed with raised eyebrows. In a vain attempt to point out the error of my ways, friends and neighbours loaded me down with their surplus, and piles of rhubarb landed on my back step. "The way of the transgressor is hard." As the porch slowly disappeared from view underneath a mountain of rhubarb stalks, I was forced to capitulate. Friend hubby could plant one root. The thing flourished and grew despite my neglect. The following spring I sent our teenage son to cultivate the garden. What did he do but lose control of the tiller and accidentally uproot the hill of rhubarb — sent it flying in all directions at once. As a mangled piece of rhubarb whipped past the window, my glee knew no bounds. Alas, "whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap ..." Wherever the rhubarb fell to earth it took root, and right from that day to this, I have been suffering the consequences. From the moment the tender young stalks of red rhubarb come poking up through the ground in spring until they reach the size of green broom handles in summer, friend hubby keeps toting it into the kitchen like stove wood. Hard pressed to make use of it all, I add it to every available recipe, until our children complain that there is no such thing in this household as a