Sustenance, Conversation & Adventure.

Molly would send us kids traipsing off to the beach to collect seaweed. Some ended up in the soups or stews she made from cheap joints, while the rest slowly turned to mulch in the garden. She also had tubs of it fermenting away by the sheds behind the house, ready to dilute and feed to her pumpkins. These entwined themselves through the Macrocarpa trees – allowing her to pick a pumpkin without having to stoop. In the garden were all sorts of herbs, which she used to flavour, to heal, or both. The flowers of the comfrey went into salads, but when any of us had a sprain she made a poultice from its leaves – she knew, of course, that its popular name is ‘Knit Bone’. For a boy growing up in New Zealand in the 60s and 70s it all seemed the norm. If Gran did it, then surely everyone else did too!