Growing up in Michigan, you learn to accept certain universal truths. The winters last until May, the potholes can swallow a Honda Civic, and rhubarb is a weed.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Every spring in the Wolverine State, rhubarb explodes along garage walls, alleyways, and chain-link fences like giant, radioactive celery. It is entirely ubiquitous. Nobody buys rhubarb in Michigan; it just appears, unbidden and aggressive. We treat it with the same casual disregard you’d give to crabgrass. It was just that sour stuff you had to bury under four pounds of white sugar so Grandma could bake a pie that still made your eyes water.
We had so much of it that it became an agricultural hazard in our backyard. I remember gathering handfuls of the giant, fan-like green leaves to feed to my childhood pet rabbit, Fluffy. I thought I was being an excellent pet owner, offering her a gourmet salad fresh from the earth. It wasn’t until much later I learned rhubarb leaves are packed with oxalic acid and are highly poisonous to small animals.
(Don’t freak out, she was fine.)
But that is how careless we were with the stuff — we threw it at rabbits. We left it to rot in the dirt. We took it completely for granted.
Then, I moved to the South.
Down here, trying to find rhubarb is like trying to source weapons-grade plutonium. My first spring below the Mason-Dixon line, I got a sudden, intense craving for that nostalgic, tart flavor. I walked into the local supermarket produce section and asked the clerk where the rhubarb was. He stared at me with total vacancy, paused, and asked if that was “the red celery.”
Long story short, they didn’t have it.
The sad truth is in my more than 20 years now of living in the Carolinas, I have found rhubarb exactly three times. Three.
The problem? Rhubarb absolutely loathes the South. It turns out this stubborn plant thrives on the brutal, frozen misery of Midwestern winters. It requires a hard ground freeze to trigger its growth. It wants to hibernate under three feet of snow, not sweat through a humid July evening. If you try to plant rhubarb down here, it doesn’t grow; it basically liquefies into the red clay out of pure, unadulterated spite. It looks at the Southern heat, says “absolutely not,” and voluntarily passes away.
Now, I look back at my Michigan youth with deep, agonizing regret. I think of the endless, bountiful patches of crimson stalks we ignored. I think of Fluffy’s near-miss with the toxic canopy. If I could go back in time, I’d harvest every single stalk, pack them into a cooler, and hoard them like gold bullion.
Yet, miracles do happen. Just last week, while wandering down the produce aisle, my eyes caught a flash of crimson — and, for once, it wasn’t Swiss chard! There, tucked away like contraband, was a small cache of genuine, fresh rhubarb. The price tag was borderline extortionate — I’m pretty sure taking out a second mortgage would have been easier on my bank account. Did I hesitate? Absolutely not. I cleared out the entire shelf, swiping every last stalk into my cart while making aggressive eye contact with anyone who approached.
My retirement savings may be gone, but tonight, I feast like Great Lakes royalty.