Rhodey was the summer house in Westerly, Rhode Island that I shared with a few friends over a period of a few years in the early nineties. It was also known as the Blue House but Rhodey is what we all knew it best by. Not just the house but the whole experience of our weekly escapes. Its the name of all our summers there and for many of us a defines an era that we've been hard pressed to recreate since.
I grew a garden there - a border alongside the house, filled with whatever I could find at the local stores that weekend and whatever survived the dry weeks without watering. Somehow it managed to thrive and welcomed us every week and provided us with herbs for our extravagant dinners that we prepared and ate amid great laughter.
The salt ponds that are a prominent part of the southern Rhode Island landscape, add a certain ethereal quality to the views. There's always a sliver of land beyond the shimmer of water, and it always looks slightly hazy, a blue gray blur in the horizon. Although there are tidy gardens that punctuate this view where we are, it's best enjoyed through the unruly tangle of an unmown lawn.