Decorating with Rhubarb

and thoughts on re-living

This morning I twisted a stalk of rhubarb until I felt the satisfying pop of the base releasing from its socket. Harvesting it this way encourages the plant to produce more stems through our short rhubarb season. And it’s satisfying. I kept going until I had a large bouquet, just like I did this time last year.

I walked inside and through the hallway that is no longer persimmon pink. Over the winter the cracks in the walls gave way to crumbling ceilings, which lead to tearing down, rebuilding and patching until all we could see were giant white veins stretching down the hallway and up the stairs. I took it as an opportunity to start fresh with a new colour, this time, a mossy olive. I put a few of the rhubarb stalks in water and placed the vase on the table in the front hall. Their giant elephant leaves filled the space - a green oasis with a pop of rhubarb pink.

Decorating minimally with rhubarb is new for me. I was in Sweden last month and since then, highlights from the trip have been working their way into my life at home. I’m not saying I’m applying airbrushed makeup like the young Swedish women, nor am I scooting around the city in a satin skirt with hair flowing behind me, but I can put rhubarb in a vase the way it was displayed at a garden cafe¹ in Stockholm. I can seek out wild ramps,² turn them into pesto and spoon the vibrant green mixture over grilled fish the way it was served in a tiny cafe on Gotland. I can whip ramps into butter and slather it over sliced sourdough blackened on a hot grill like at P.A & Co.³ in Stockholm. I can work fika into my afternoons - that wonderful Swedish tradition of pausing for a coffee or tea and a piece of cake. We fika-ed over rhubarb cake, rhubarb tarts, rhubarb crumble with a dollop of crème fraîche and of course soft and sticky cardamom-scented Swedish cinnamon buns. This is the best part of going away - the re-living of it all in the comfort of your own home.

Re-living has been a theme for me lately. I walked under a hawthorn tree in Stockholm, its bright red blooms just on the edge of fading. A week later I arrived home in time to see the tiny pink-blossomed hawthorn across the street just beginning to bloom. Hawthorn leaves are lobed like an oak leaf, but smaller, like little paws measuring 2-6 cm in length. The blossoms begin as tight, rose-shaped clusters the size of my baby fingernail, then open wide as spring progresses. Our neighbourhood hawthorn sits on the verge between the sidewalk and the street, adding a touch of glam to a stretch of student housing. Garbage rejected by the collectors sits underneath, along with an abandoned parking cone from recent road works. But the hawthorn doesn't notice; it’s looking up to the sky.

I have also been re-living through my writing. I am working on a project that requires sifting through the back pages of my website, cutting and pasting old essays and moving them into a one, easy to read location.⁴ The short essays, thoughts, paragraphs and ideas begin in 2009, in dribs and drabs, then pick up pace in 2016 when I committed to a weekly newsletter. I was never good at committing to a blog; blogging felt too claustrophobic for my random writing practice. But for some reason, a weekly newsletter that arrived in people's inboxes felt doable and more me.

This project is taking forever. I mine through the stories the way I go through old photo albums, lingering over images and words, remembering life - what I worried about, what felt important, what lit me up. The family grew up, my jobs shifted, we moved house, but the desire to capture a feeling through words and images has stayed the same. I wrote about exactly this nine years ago, in April of 2015.⁵

I was at a photography workshop, tasked with photographing a bowl of yogurt, dried strawberries, granola and dark, syrupy stewed blueberries. There were various ceramic bowls to play with, lilacs still damp from morning rain, old silver cutlery and soft, midday light. Before we began styling our shots, our instructor asked us to write down what we believed our “voice” to be. What were we trying to share with the world? I remember awkward laughter and whispering. Some people took notes, others stared at the ceiling.

I read this post on the edge of my seat, eager for my answer to the question. Who are we Lindsay, and what are we sharing with the world? Tell me, former self.

Instead of answering the question I shared a series of the photos I took that day, each one slightly different, slowly working towards the one that felt right, the one that felt like me. The lens got tighter, the light grew darker, and the ingredients - white yogurt stained with blueberry syrup, textured with seeds and sliced fruit and just a hint of lilacs framing the scene - told a story that eventually felt like me.

I am still looking for my voice, tweaking, shifting and playing with words, food and light until it feels right. I don’t think we ever find it. It’s the search that keeps us coming back to our work, our creativity, every day, every season.

Hawthorn's in order of bloom - 1-4 The Cotswolds, 5- Stockholm, and finally, coming in 6th, Halifax

1. We were at Rosendals Trädgård, a café inside a botanical garden in Stockholm

2. Also called wild leeks, wood leeks or wild garlic, ramps are a perennial in the amaryllis family producing flat, garlicky leaves in early spring. We added a handful to Smitten Kitchen’s (very delicious) Green Pasta while away… so good.

3. Highly recommend! P.A. & Co

4. Has anyone else used Scrivener? I'm new, we’re not quite best friends yet, but we’re getting there.

5. For a blast from the past, What’s Your Voice? can be found over here.