Seaweed Ups and Downs

I'll admit that sometimes, just sometimes, seaweed annoys me. I wash it, dry it, tend to its every need, coax it and still it refuses to play! The wet weather is not helping at all. Potentially interesting dramatic shapes wilt into miserable heaps after rain - even no rain just a lack of warmth. Is this really July? 

Sadly I had to chuck a piece of woven seaweed which I was drying outside when it rained monsoon style and the poor seaweed was drenched yet again and deteriorated into mush. I'm taking extra care now as health and safety concerns are simmering at uni about the idea of rotting seaweed in the studios. Toxic alert! This just confirms my initial premise of including seaweed in the category of a 'horrible creature'. We do have an aversion to it - its smell, sometimes slimy texture and tentacularity.

However I was cheered by some real pretties picked up at Broughty Ferry beach (rated excellent quality bathing by SEPA). The clear warmish water was so tempting and the colours of sea lettuce, laver and green algae lifted my spirits.  The beach always always seems to have plenty of large and long writhing sugar kelp left by high tide and I wonder if this is because of dangerous currents round the headland of the castle. Maybe they pull the kelp away from whatever it is clinging onto - not by root but by what is called its holdfast - lots of potential in these complex structures.

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