On the Porch

This is the old Parker Store in Goffstown, New Hampshire. It houses the displays and offices of the Goffstown Historical Society and is on the National Register Of Historical Sites.

The Parker Brothers sold dry goods to Goffstown, and over the years additional buildings having nothing to do with anything Parker have landed on the site. There is a small outbuilding called the Wait Station where folks working in Manchester waited for the train at the foot of the Uncannoonuc hills to the east. Orphaned by time, it ended up at the corner of Parker Road and Gorham Pond Road along with an old two room schoolhouse.

The museum has a porch that faces south. Pleasant in the morning, it is hot on summer afternoons, and when I put containers on the porch I chose durable, old fashioned plants to put in them. The gardens around the buildings are eclectic, a mixture of the antique and the Latest Thing. Forgotten annuals and trendy Persicarias bred by a Belgian landscape designer. This is not the classic New England garden.

Yet on the porch I felt there should be a tip of the hat to the past, and I chose heirloom petunias “Old Fashioned Purple Vining” and the evening fragrant “Rainmaster”, both from Select Seeds.

I think the garden fits the Museum, once a store where mothers and grandmothers bought their fabrics for the dresses in the old style while their daughters dreamed of the new, the fashionable, and the latest hats and dresses from Paris and New York-

*********************************************************************************************

This is canna “Rosalinda” blooming at the Museum.