There’s a field down the street from where I live.  It’s been there as long as I can remember and in this day and age, where suburban sprawl pushes deeper and deeper into the outskirts - until there’s no city center at all, but just one suburban town butting into another and another - finding a field like this has become a rare thing, indeed. 

A few years back, before the omnipresent talk of recessions and housing bubbles and job creation, it was going to be another housing development.  The pumpkin patch would go –leveled and paved – and in its place, another set of houses squeezed as closely together as possible: cookie-cutter facades masking builder’s grade cabinetry and mirror-image floor plans.  But instead, in the epic downturn of the economy, something good came out of it all. 

The building stopped. The pumpkin patch remained and the fields were not built over.  The grasses grew back and then the bushes and h flowers. 

Now it’s a strawberry field.  It’s owned by an Asian family and on certain days during the summer, you can see them hunched over, harvesting the fields, nothing but their straw hats -nón lá – bobbing up and down.
 
And these strawberries warmed in the sun:  sweet and soft, with just a twinge of tartness behind a round, sweet flavor are so delicious, you find that you just can’t look at a normal, frankenberry the same way again. They’re lovely and delicious and, even for a girl who’ll take a big ol’ slice of cake for dessert any day, they’d be perfect for dessert just by themselves.

Dear bad day,

I despise you.  Loathe you.  Don’t like anything about you.  Today I wanted happiness.  Today I had good hair – wasted on angry words, judgment and meanness.  Today felt just fine until the ugly crept in, insidious and sneaking, setting up camp right in my gut where it’s feeding on my insides. 

I’m exhausted from the gnawing coming inside out.  Tired from all the battling this day has seen.  The fatigue has crept in and now the only remedy for the slinking ugliness is rest. Perhaps sleep will drown out the voices of the day; dimming sadness, causing it to fade away.  Maybe the darkness of rest will bring lightness to tomorrow. 

And just like that, I banish you from my existence.  You are gone.

 You have no power here.   

Tomorrow you will be a distant memory,


Me

After many hours toiling on the Internet (ok, maybe just a two-minute Google search) the final verdict on the rhubarab issue is:

Vegetable.

BUT... it's not really so simple, friends.  The botanical...etymology, if you will, is slightly more complex:

Et voilà.  Capitalism prevails.  Fruit it is.