On Sunday I met up with my friend Heather from MA in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire for breakfast. Then I walk to The Gardens at Strawbery Banke going to the Strawbery Banke Museum
The HH and I had visited the museum back in May of 2019, so it was nice to be able to go back this time at the height of summer and see the gardens so full and all the flowers in bloom.
There’s something about walking through an old historic downtown steeped with history and looking at all the homes that have been there for centuries. And all the flowers and vegetables people would have been growing in their yards {and later preserving}. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing those things.
It was fun to imagine the streets filled with horse drawn carriages rather than cars and wondering how people survived wearing so much clothing while going about their daily life when the temperatures were in the 80’s and 90’s during the summer months.
Now this was clever. Chicken wire wrapped around the base of a teepee to prevent bunnies from eating the bean starts! I was so excited to see this that I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing! 🙂
I’m totally going to do this next year.
Hollyhocks. I need to plant some of those.
I don’t know why, but it still surprises me that peaches do so well here in New England.
Breakfast and a walk to Strawbery Banke. It was the perfect way to spend a morning. And it also reminded me that I need to get out more and explore all there is to see around me. 🙂
Have a great day everyone,
~Mavis
Linda says
We have a whole bed of hollyhocks at the front of our house that the deer miraculously leave alone.
Karen says
They are so beautiful and self-seed as well. I have red and pink.
Susan H. says
I use chicken wire as a support for both green beans and cucumbers. To prevent squirrels digging in my pots when I first sow them, I will use bits and pieces of leftover chicken wire as a cover! It allows sun and rain in and the wire can be reused several years.
Grove says
Hollyhocks are beautiful and we had many when we lived on Utah. However, they begin to get really aggressive after a while and it was hard to get them to stay in one spot. They were popping up in places we didnt want and were hard to get rid of. They were great for attracting bees and other insects.
Eliza says
Strawberry Banke is on my summer bucket list! One of my favorite places and sadly we haven’t been back yet since before Covid, every time we’re in town it’s closed. My house is late 1700s and I especially love the houses around that age and imagining what mine would have looked like then!
Carolina Cooper says
I actually work @Strawbery Banke and from May 1st to October 31st we are open 7 days a week, rain or shine, from 10 am to 5 pm. Please come back!!!
Carolina Cooper says
Mavis, I work at Strawbery Banke and I have been following you for years and years—even before you were in the HOA house!!! Too bad I was not working last Sunday. Did you just tour the gardens or did you actually go into some of the houses? I love the gardens at the the Governor Goodwin mansion. His wife Mary was an avid gardener and she kept great notes and drawings in her diary. When the house was moved from its former location about a mile away, in 1963, from her diaries we recreated both the design of the garden as well as the same types of flowers that she had planted 100 years previously!!