Those Lovely Great Big Leaves!

I was working at OASIS Fine Art & Craft in Harrisonburg last week when Brenda Fairweather (of Hot Flash Pottery and D’vine Baskets fame) walked in with a long tubular newspaper roll in her arms. She presented it to me with a flourish and there they were-- a whole collection of huge rhubarb leaves. It’s the rhubarb stems we eat; the leaves are allegedly poisonous. I’ve never been tempted to eat them, for sure, but I know what to do with them on the clay! What a thoughtful gift! 

Having spent my youth alternating hot summer days between weeding a vegetable garden and throwing heavy hay bales onto a wagon, as an adult I have been steadfastly committed to avoiding such toil. Lo and behold, Bill gets stationed in Germany and we discover that our 1830s house has a designated plot in the community garden. Once I learned that my neighbors didn’t think Americans know how to make gardens, of course I had to prove them wrong. But back in the US, I quickly reverted to my delightful get-our-veggies-at-the-farmers’-market strategy and planted flowers. 

Then we moved to West Virginia where there seems to be no end of space and I could not help designing a few containers for perennial eatables. Bill built them—sturdy and ready. Two for asparagus (someday I’ll tell you that story), one for gooseberries (because the name makes me want to sing limericks and reminds me of some old friends of my mother’s), and a big one for rhubarb. This turned out to be an exercise in patience because only the berries can be used the first year. The pencil-thin asparagus and flourishing rhubarb plants need to grow for one more year, after which I am promised they will be plump and hearty. Knowing  how hard it is for me ignore those huge rhubarb leaves waving in the breeze back there and looking like they would love to shape and decorate pots, Brenda arrived with her cylinder of leaves! Now that’s a real gift!