Rhubarb

    Rhubarb has always been in my life.  There was a large patch just north of the farm house in which I grew up.  My mother moved to the farm in 1927 and it was there then and still is today.  It's never been cultivated, sprayed or tended...just some picked and it continues to thrive.
    In her novel The Madonnas of Leningrad Debra Dean, and her editors, reveal their ignorance of rhubarb.  "'Papa put in some rhubarb one year, " she explains to Naureen.  "The stuff went wild, it took over the whole garden.'"  p. 103  Nah...not rhubarb...it stays where it's planted and the only thing I've known to kill it is flooding.
    The following is from Garrison Keillor's Daily Almanac
"On this date in 1770, Benjamin Franklin introduced rhubarb to America. He was representing the American colonies as an ambassador in London, and sent a crate of rhubarb to his friend John Bartram. The plant, native to central Asia, had been introduced in Europe by traders; the rhubarb that Franklin sent to America had come to London from Siberia. Rhubarb first appeared in American seed catalogs in 1829, and soon became a popular ingredient in pies. John Bartram was also responsible for introducing kohlrabi and poinsettias to America."