Stealth Rhubarb

When we moved into the cabin last spring, I discovered the only rhubarb plant on the property looked like it came from Alice in Wonderland's miniature world. The stalks were approximately the size of my pinky.

Having grown up on my great-grandparents' homestead, which at one time hosted seven massive rhubarb plants, I didn't know if spring could really be spring without rhubarb pie, rhubarb cobbler, rhubarb muffins, warm rhubarb sauce over vanilla ice cream, rhubarb marmalade, so much rhubarb it oozed out your ears. And the neighbors, the ones on the other side of the bay who were only up a week or two at the most each summer had a garden choked with rhubarb, chives, and raspberries. It was a bramble of neglect and invasive edibles. Surely they wouldn't notice . . .

"Just take it," Andy's aunt, the longest permanent resident of the bay said.

Just take it?

So under the cover of dusk Andy, his cousin, and I stole over to the neighbor's cabin, shovel in hand. From the far corner of the garden, we took just a shovelful of rhubarb stalks and roots, hardly making a dent in the sprawling plant. Back at our cabin, we planted rhubarb in a raised bed and as we watered them, we giggle softly at our stealthy feat.

Thinking back on things, I'm not sure why I was so adamant about needing better producing rhubarb plants. The two stolen plants needed time to adjust to their new home and we didn't harvest any stalks last summer. Despite that fact, we ended up being gifted with so much rhubarb from other acquaintances that we had enough rhubarb to make a pie, muffins, sauce, and a batch of marmalade.

Barbara Kingsolver writes about zucchini season being the only time of year when people in small towns lock their houses and car doors to avoid gifts of unwanted zucchini. In northern Minnesota, rhubarb is the spring equivalent of zucchini. Even if you don't grow it, you'll manage to end up with an overabundance. It's like organic plant bombing.

Still, maybe I want to do some organic plant bombing of my own. Maybe I won't really feel like I've come of age until I can thrust Ziploc bags stuffed with fat rhubarb stalks into people's hands amid protesting.

I worried a little that karma might affect my stolen rhubarb plants. But every day the stalks grow a little bigger and we get one day closer to rhubarb pie. I have a feeling stealth rhubarb will taste just a little sweeter than any rhubarb I've ever had before.

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Life for Rent

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy,
well I deserve nothing more than I get
cause nothing I have is truly mine

Since graduating from college three years ago this month (May 13, 2007, to be exact) I have moved seven times.

Granted, they haven’t all been big moves (but some have): two of the moves were back to my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house. Technically, I’ve moved to my parents’ house three times in this time period, but since I spent last summer bopping around between my parents’ house on weeknights and the Shack and the cabin on my days off, I’m not sure what exactly we’re calling last summer. Living out of a suitcase?

The point is, that since graduating from college and supposedly “getting on with my life,” my life has fallen into a haphazard cycle of six-month periods that involve a different job and a different living space. All of my belongings have not all been at the same residency since I was 18. As much as great trips like the recent New York City trip can inspire me to throw away dreams of a permanent life and instead spend my life jetting off to fascinating locales, there’s a deeper part of me that’s ready for this spiral of six-month periods in my life to settle down into something a little more linear.

I am twenty-five. My plan is to heck through the world with a B.A. until a master’s degree proves necessary. So far, so good, at least when it comes to making a living with a B.A. in English. (Garrison Keller references at this point are strongly frowned down on.) Yet, I’m far enough removed from my collegiate experience to be ready for my life to settle into a more natural ebb and flow of seasons instead of being a revolving door of change. It seems as though life might be headed in that direction, but I’ll let you know how things look in six months.

I can tell you one thing, it’s high time to stop listening to NPR’s Marketplace. Every time, I happen to listen to that show, I find myself worried about paying off student loans. I wonder if I've already missed the boat on saving for retirement. I start to feel the need to be a fiscally responsible adult. Then I remember that I’m an English major.

Finances are pretty straightforward when you’re a freelance writer. Since I have no money, I manage my finances with one cardinal rule: Spend as little as possible. Whatever’s left over gets sat on. Is that for retirement? I’m not really sure. It seems like a decent idea.

Lately, Andy keeps bring up the idea of buying property before the real estate market turns around. Logically, it makes pretty decent sense. But to be honest, I find it all to terrifying, too “grown-up” to truly contemplate. (I suppose when you reach the point of needing a plant sitter for your houseplants, you’ve probably stumbled across the bridge into adulthood without knowing it.) I’d rather not deal with questions about loans and mortages. I’m even less excited to deal with the more pressing question: where do I really want to be for the foreseeable future?

Right now, I look up from my computer to stare out the window, where water laps at the lake’s shallows. If this is life for rent, things are pretty good. But that chicken coop I sometimes dream of isn’t going to materialize until I learn to buy.

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