Rhubarb Memories and Future Pie Dreams

This weekend, we went to see the ladies of the Greensburg Garden Club for their annual plant sale. As A puts it, I “wanted to go buy some plants off old ladies.” With limited cash on us, we had to be very selective. However, they were selling some rhubarb for $4.00, which we agreed was worth it to give it a try in the yard somewhere.

We both have fond childhood memories of rhubarb. A is still heartbroken about the fact that when his parents moved a little over a year ago from the home they had all his life to a new place on the outskirts of Oil City, they didn’t take any rhubarb cuttings from the plant in the backyard. I remember my grandmother making rhubarb pie every year, with rhubarb from her neighbor, Vivian’s, backyard plant. I would stand on a chair in her kitchen and watch her bake (she was not an avid, or very talented baker, but she did rhubarb pie well). We were the only ones in the family who were really enthusiastic about it, so we had plenty to share amongst the two of us.

We surmised that since this rhubarb was from a local plant, the odds were good it would do just fine in our lower backyard, since there’s not enough room for it in the raised bed garden. As A keeps reminding me, it’s like a weed. But, ever since I saw in a book that the Yankee Gardener put it in with his perennial flower beds, I see it as a little fancier than a weed, I cannot help myself.

However, we planted it in an out-of-the-way place, not the side flower garden, and we are keeping our fingers crossed. It’s not looking so good for the $4.00 rhubarb…yet.