For all the talk about Mother Nature walloping us but good here on the East Coast with a nor'easter, I thought I'd share a story about her gentler side, which I enjoyed during a visit to Rhode Island this weekend.
We were gathered for a funeral, relatives from far and wide, and when the service was over, a few of us decided to clear our heads and head for the beach to gather seaweed for our gardens. This is an old practice in many quarters, and the Rhode Island cousins who live along beautiful Narragansett Bay swear by it. Seaweed is loaded with nutrients and there's plenty of it along the shore, just sitting there at low tide. Why not?
We had a drive back to Philadelphia to consider, and listened politely to all the caveats and jokes about how stinky the seaweed can be sitting in the trunk of the car or spread over the garden back home. But we'd also heard cousins earlier in the day explain how they dry the seaweed, then crumble it and toss it in the composter for later use or hose it off (to get rid of the salt), cut it up and put it right in the beds. Everyone seemed to have a favorite method of recycling it, but they all agreed it was dynamite on flowers and vegetables.
So four of us - my husband and I and two of our favorite cousins, Susan and John from Camden, Maine - trooped off to the public beach in Narrangansett. I fished an old trash bag and some Shop Rite bags out of the trunk - I knew they'd come in handy some day! - and we made our way to the water. It was low tide. The wind was whipping us, our hair was standing on end and the temperature had dropped. But the shore was loaded with goodies ... seaweed, clam shells and carcasses of horseshoe and spider crabs. Perfect.
There seemed to be as many dogs as people walking along, and we stopped to pet every Lab we encountered, which was just about every single dog there. It was a wonderful antidote to the funeral, my second in a week.
We filled the bags, took a lot of silly pictures, caught up with family news and ended up walking several miles along the shoreline, getting our shoes and jeans wet and sandy. It was comforting being with old friends and being there, at the beach. Funerals have a way of shutting you down and our seaweed excursion helped us all rebound.
So now I've got a bunch of Rhode Island seaweed in my garage, just waiting for the weather to warm up. It didn't smell on the ride home and it's OK in the garage. I kind of like the idea of having such a tangible reminder of all the fun we've had with the cousins in Rhode Island. And I love the idea of the friendships and histories we share with them being present here in Philadelphia, in our garden, through something as simple as seaweed tossed upon the shore on a chilly, gray afternoon in April.
