One From Eighteen Years Ago

 

Hunting The Rhubarb

Yesterday was Kerry Sister's mumbly-mumbleth birthday. As her birthday was almost totally forgotten last year we decided to mark the occasion with a Rhubarb Hunt. I told them I'd found rhubarb growing in the moss but no one believed me. So I led an expedition to prove that I was right.

The Kerry Sister and the Leitrim Sister on the hunt for The Rhubarb. The Kerry Sister is kicking spoor for clues. The Leitrim Sister prefers to sniff the air for that elusive Rhubarb scent.

The Rhubarb has been spotted! Leitrim Sister says it is a lot of bollocks and that it is False Rhubarb.

The Rhubarb

Bert is horticulturally highly qualified and he thinks it is Rhubarb. It looks like, smells like, tastes like, and smokes like Rhubarb.

Macy prefers to wallow in a moss hole.

The Mystery Solved

Rhubarb growing in Drumkeeran Moss remained a puzzle until, six years later, I met Bobby.

Bobby was Lord O'Neill's man on the ground, the mossy ground, to be precise. The day I met him he was admiring a patch of narcissi that he'd planted the previous autumn. He told me that his wife was throwing the bulbs out so he thought he'd plant them in the moss to see how they'd do. Now, as far as I know, he just got the one year out of them as I never saw them again. I did ask him If he'd ever tried rhubarb and he said he had but it hadn't made much of a plant. The mystery solved!