I have tried repeatedly to buy this plant from Annie’s Annuals in California, but it is always sold out. It is a tall spike celosia with resplendent ruby splotched leaves and pink flowers. Since I could not find the plants, I opted for seeds, and growing it has been a trial, for New Hampshire makes it nervous.

It germinated quickly, but when it found that a 70 degree room and grow lights were the best I could offer, it sulked and stayed an inch tall for a month. I moved it into my slightly warmer kitchen and put it in a large zip plastic bag for humidity. Another two weeks and it had grown a quarter inch. I bought two heating mats and put the seedlings and the plastic bags on them. The celosias went up to two inches.

I waited for warmer weather and shuffled the plants off the mats out into the sun and back in at night. There was not much warmth in May and the celosias sat still.

Now, with tropical downpours every day and temperatures rising they are expanding and I expect them to be at 5 inches soon. I hope they reach at least six feet, for I am an optimist.

Consider “Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate”, another tall tropical annual. It was six inches tall in June but seven feet in September. Miracles can happen!

A more obliging little annual is the antique cottage garden flower “Jewels Of Opar”. It has tiny spikes of red flowers followed by little sprays of reddish berries. It self seeds some places but I am not sure it will here. Like the celosias, it seeds came from Nancy Ondra in Pennsylvania.

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As I write this I am waiting for the annual Parade of vintage cars out of New Boston to come up the road for their 4th of July outing. Last night just after midnight the Annual “Ghost Train” went up and down the hills of the town. It came through again at 4am, and woke me up for the day-

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-

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This is canna “Rosalinda” blooming at the Museum.

I have seen photos of large groups of this plant ,but even a close -up of one of the five I have in the Frost Garden is astonishing. From first opening to full bloom its changes are like no coneflower I have ever seen. Its Latin name is Echinacea simulata. Its common – Wavy Leaved coneflower.

The coneflowers have been manipulated and “improved” for decades. Loud colors, doubles and half doubles, even bred into the shape of pincushions.

But this prairie flower is elegant. Not all coneflowers are.

Here is its evolution from first opening to full bloom.

Below is the headstone of the lost Mary.

Above is rose “Pretty Pink Polly”.

Salvia “Roman Red”.

Above is Linaria purpurea, a classic cottage garden flower.

Orange comes soon in early summer when orange daylilies cover the verges and fields and the modest dooryards along country roads.

The Parker Museum has some orange blooms now. One is the snapdragon “Cool Orange”, which we planted in front of the wishing well planter with its new antique rusted handpump. The other is a coreopsis new to me,” Lil’l Bang Darling Clementine”. Quite the name, I think.

I do not fear bright color and the sunset shades, and blue, yellow and gray together. I love red as long as the blooms are not outsized. I like white if it presents as a cloud or a mist .

The Mary Garden at the Goffstown Historical Society is about to bloom with its roses, rose campions, and toadflax. And despite the chill nights and rainy days, canna “Panache” is flowering.

It appears that the unnatural cold has pushed the peonies and roses to bloom later, and that their season and the daylily season may collide-

I wonder if the ash from Canada’s wildfires has caused this strange weather. Back in the early 1800s a massive volcanic eruption in the Far East spewed so much ash into the atmosphere that New England suffered through the “Year without a Summer”. Snow in June, frozen lakes, no crops.

Despite the dank days, annual volunteers are coming up. Old fashioned balsams, nicotianas, cosmos, and the old cottage garden favorite” Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate”.

What is warmer than the gleam of copper?

Ready to bake and cook in the winter kitchen.

Vintage creamers from France.

Below are vintage Hall Pottery casseroles from the 50s, I believe. I looked on Ebay and Etsy recently and saw that this elegant series of this pottery were nowhere to be seen. All for sale now seem to be muddy colored teapots and casseroles. I wonder if the older gold leaf pottery went out of favor because it cannot go in a microwave or a dishwasher. Convenience is King now.

As my age goes up, my collecting dwindles. When I lived in the South I spent Friday and Saturday mornings at the estate sales , which are commoner there than they are here. Not only were there great inexpensive finds, the sales were also a good place for people watching. Something I will post about in the future.

Almost everything I own is second hand. A dining room table my sister did not want .Old desks and chairs. Sweaters and coats from Goodwill or Ebay. I like recycling more than just cans and bottles-

Above- Winter Peace, Bow, New Hampshire

Several years ago I learned about Pleonexia.

I read an article on this disease of the soul on the website “TecumsehProject.org.” Being technically illiterate, I cannot put in a link, but if you can find Google, you can find this. I thought a few people might be interested to read about a Greek concept that puts a name to a greed that can never be satisfied.

As the philosopher once said “Nothing is enough to someone for whom enough is little.”

True thousands of years ago. True now.

Above is a sunny window facing southwest. The yellow tags are sticky traps for whiteflies, which can shrivel leaves and discourage a plant to death. The spray bottles are Neem Oil and insecticidal soap, used on aphids. There are many pots of special lantanas in this room, and they are loved by whiteflies, although they are not as damaged by the flies as the tender salvias are.

Salvias, Gardenmeister fuschias, and tobacco plants. All doing well.

A canna, potted up and kept cool and dry. Keeping cannas in soil is easier for me and safer on the cannas than keeping them wrapped in newspaper kept damp. The newspaper dries out, the cannas shrivel. and a plant that cost 25.00 plus an hefty shipping fee is lost.

Though early spring is the time catalogs arrive, I give them just a glance, for I order from their company on line. Ordering by mail is ordering blind, for by the time the nursery gets an order by mail, what you sent for may be sold out. Nurseries know what they have and their sites know what they do not.

I don’t know how the online nurseries are staying in business, considering that a $90.00 dollar order might cost $35.00 to ship standard. Pay for overnight air can exceed the cost of the plants. I can only think that plant lovers love plants and spare no expense, even if they have to scrounge elsewhere.

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Sites From the World Outside

A Winter sunrise.

Open water on the Middle Branch of the Piscataquog River in New Boston. The river has not frozen this year, and upstream, Gregg Mill Pond is ice free. This has been a balmy winter with the exception of the flash freeze and high wind over Christmas that left us without power for four days.

Who lives here? I suspect a raccoon.

And below, a photo of the leathery creeping leaves of the beloved New England wildflower Trailing Arbutus, fragrant and blooming in April on the field edges of the Oak and Pine forest.

It is a tough road for plants wintering in a cool room from November to March. One needs insecticidal soap spray, sticky traps, reduced watering and vigilance to keep the indoor garden going. If I winter over tropical butterfly weeds, there is an ongoing battle with aphids. And some plants, depressive by nature, just give up and wither thinking spring will never come.

Yet some plants will put up a bloom or two. Here is one of them- Nicotiana “Crimson Bedder”, a tender perennial I bought from Annie’s Annuals in California. It blooms non stop from spring to freeze and spreads gently by wandering roots. It overwinters very well and I consider it an exemplary plant.

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A Surprise from the 2023 Plant Delights mail order catalogue.

I was astounded to see a new race of Lycoris, or “Surprise Lily” offered to Northern gardeners. Lycoris, an amaryllis relative, is a summer blooming bulb, common in Southern gardens, where it appears overnight in the heat of late July and early August. One day there is empty earth, the next there are lilies under the dogwoods, around the mailboxes, between the hostas.

I have ordered four bulbs to plant in the Mary Headstone flower bed at the Goffstown Historical Society Garden in Goffstown, NH.

They are a variety of Lycoris sprengeri , discovered in China. The breeder named them “Pink Floyd”, and they a a bright pink. Unfortunately I do not have a photo, copyright law being what it is, but one can view them on the Plant Delights website.