Drying Weather, On the Road

Hot, Hot, Hot.
Its been blazing HOT here in Philadelphia, days upon days of the upper ninety's. I am lucky enough to enjoy two get-aways: one to a cool mountaintop glacial lake in Pennsylvania, with forests of still healthy hemlocks and majestic white pines, and one get-away to the beach. From each I bring back plants.

From the mountains, my friend Penny had a lovely overgrown patch of double-curley mint -- deeply resinous and fragrant. I gather generous bundles, knowing it will come back literally twice as thick for her after my ministrations.  I gather an unruley pile.  I learned from my teachers to try to focus on the plant I am leaving behind, rather than that which  I am taking, when I gather...in respect for the plant. I leave an offering, and fall into a meditation with a little hum as I bend and cut, bend and cut, fragrance all around me.

Mint.

For mental clarity and focus. It soothes the stomach, mildly stimulating the nerves.

By the time we get back home, the two bundles I have stowed on the back deck are already dried.
Tired as we were, we chatted the whole. way. home.

Mostly we walked in the beautiful forest, botanized, swam and admired the ruins of last year's Fairy houses, renewed old ties.




These hefty building materials must provide shelter for sizeable gnomes...

 

...stone-loving gnomes with fairy fencing.

Just  two days later, I am dazzled by the illuminated haze of a misty morning at the jersey shore.

Ahh...sand-scoured feet and hands: the ultimate spa treatment: a day at the beach...

Some storm out at sea has unteathered ruffled clumps of bladderwrack and slippery sheets of some laver-like seaweed, and offered them up in these Jersey waves. We catch them up, and have a full slippery handful by the time we head back up the beach.

.Bladderwrack.

Prime ingrediant in my Mermaid detoxifying bath, it is a powerful purifying agent,

I know better than to take these indoors, and spread them to dry on the shelf along the wall of the bulkhead, where soon, as I suspected, many tiny creatures crawl out of them. They dry up so readily,

and just as readily rehydrate when the neighbor unsuspectingly turns on their sprinkler system.

I rationaliuze that they needed a fresh-water rinse, and  take them home, where I spread them on newspaper-covered screens, in the blazing sun.  Something about them attracts flies (UGH!) so I end up protecting them by sandwhiching them between an old black ckalk-board and a scavenged window-screen.

Drying for two days of this heat, they finally crunch with a satifying snap. I pour them into a paper bag and label them: Bladderwrck 1sts. Ocean City 2011. and I suppose I will have to change my labels for Mermaid Deep Cleansing Bath. New Jersey Bladderwrck certainly doesn't sound as good as Maine.

Maine is my next get-away destination...