​Lisha Kimball has a lovely farm in a bucolic area of New Hampshire. Recently a group of garden club members and friends took the scenic drive to Webster to visit her Milkcan Corner Farm while her raspberries, blueberries, and currants were ripe and her daylilies were bursting with blooms.
 
Fifteen of us pitched in and weeded a row of daylilies for exactly 30 minutes. As we pulled out weeds and chatted, the 30 minutes went by in a flash, but more than seven hours of weeding was accomplished. Lisha, who doesn’t hire help with her farm, was very appreciative.
 
She chatted with us while we enjoyed our picnic lunch among her daylilies and berries. Lisha had a rapt audience as she talked about growing daylilies and made suggestions about fertilizer and ways to keep pesky pests away. 
 
Lisha has an amazing amount of energy and doesn’t relax even when the growing season is past. She spends her winters making baskets. Wide eyes and dropped jaws followed by oohs and aahs were the typical reaction to entering her basket shop. 
 
You can learn more about Lisha’s farm at
https://www.granthamgardenclub.org/flowers--folklore-blog/the-milkcan-corner-farm

​Although houses with their large plots of land generate the most flowers grown in Grantham, there are many condos which also boast impressive gardens.  These condo gardens are often cooperative venture among the owners and have the added benefit of being enjoyed by a mutual admiration society. One such co-op garden I have been invited to many times is in Eastman’s West Cove and is the handiwork of the Courtyard Gardening Group led by GGC member Karen North. The group also includes Barb Jones, Cathy Ayres, Sandy and Maynard Wheeler, and Sue Pratt.  According to Barb Jones who gives the other folks most of the credit “I am so blessed to be able to enjoy their amazing work. They have transformed this rock pile.”
 
Another admirer of the garden is an extra long garter snake named Fred. I had a chance encounter with Fred who was camera shy and zipped off before I could get him in focus. Fred does his part to keep pesky critters from eating the flowers.
 
If you go for a walk along The Cove, you will get a glimpse of their delightful gardens. For a closer look, here are some pictures. 

​Jim Daigle has created his own piece of paradise in Plainfield, NH, where he lives with his wife, two dogs, a cat, a parrot and 3,000 hostas.
 
Recently Jim gave GGC members an exclusive tour of his gardens made up of 650 varieties of hostas plus many companion plants. The three hours flew by as we wandered through his charming grounds while Jim told us funny anecdotes and gave us inside information and tips like using cut up leaves instead of expensive mulch to keep the soil moist and discourage weeds.
 
I learned that Jim is an artist who uses water colors to paint lovely flowers and scenery. Not surprisingly, Jim uses his artistic talent to balance the colors and textures in his gardens, often adding a piece of statuary or wood to delightful effect.
 
One of my favorites is a petite hosta garden that is guarded by a crouching cat. Jim drilled holes in an old, mossy log and populated it with various types of tiny hostas. Another favorite is a piece of wood which looked so much like a whale Jim mounted it on his art studio and used a hosta plant for the blow hole.
 
Jim has an incredible breadth of knowledge about his gardens. Much of what he told us is based on his own experiments and years of experience.  To demonstrate how to split hostas, Jim dug one up, showed us where to cut and used a saw to neatly create multiple hosta plants which he then gave away to his appreciative audience. Mine, without the dirt, is in a vase on my dining room table—another of his suggestions.
 
Jim involved the group in an activity to design a hosta garden with people moving potted hostas of different colors, markings, and sizes. One of his secrets to his healthy garden is the soil which he enriches with compost. When he showed us his 3-step compost area, he dug out of handful of cut grass from the middle of the compost pile and asked me to touch it. I jumped when I felt how hot it was. All that material was really cooking.
 
At the end of the tour, Jim offered us potted plants for sale but also gave anyone interested the opportunity to dig up plants from a large garden plot with even more varieties. I grabbed a shovel and dug in. This was an up-close-and personal, get-your-hands-dirty experience. Great fun!
 
If I tried to tell you all I learned from Jim, it would lose a lot in translation, but there's the option to see for yourself. Contact him at jim.hostas@gmail.com to arrange for a visit.

in recent days, my best friend Elise and I enjoyed some found time and took the opportunity to drive 90 minutes north of Grantham to the idyllic village of Sugar Hill. The main purpose of our little road trip was to check out what we had heard is one of the most scenic venues in the state of New Hampshire. This is particularly true during early to mid-June when the colorful lupines are at their annual flowering peak.    

By way of background, Sugar Hill is one of those small northern New Hampshire towns that probably looks and feels a lot today just as it did, say, 75 years ago. In fact, it is officially the newest incorporated town in NH having earned this status 60 years ago in 1962. Once a Victorian resort town, Sugar Hill is perhaps best known today as the home of Polly’s Pancake Parlor which has been serving up breakfast/brunch fare for over 80 years.

In early June, it’s the lupines that take center stage in Sugar Hill. For nearly 30 years the town has hosted the annual Sugar Hill Lupine Festival and Market however, like so many other events, it has been regrettably cancelled in recent years due to the ongoing pandemic. https://www.lupinefestival.com
​
Nonetheless, the festival cancellation didn’t stop the annual return of the blue, purple, and pink lupines!

​Upon arriving in the village, it was not hard at all to spot the lupines which seemed to be popping up just about everywhere…along the road, between houses, etc.  However, the most stunning displays were in many of Sugar Hill’s open fields with the White Mountains themselves serving as a spectacular backdrop.  Here’s a photograph of a field of lupines we came across swaying back and forth as if they had been choreographed with a wide range of mountains including Mount Lafayette and Cannon Mountain, separated by Franconia Notch, in the near distance (Mount Washington was also in view but, as is often the case, was experiencing clouds covering the summit).  Painters with their palettes were a common sight as they captured the stunning lupine/mountain images on canvas.  

​In addition to multiple open fields of lupines, we noticed the flowers thriving in other parts of the village as well including behind the famous Harman’s Cheese and Country Store and on the grounds of St. Matthew’s Chapel, a quintessential New England white-steepled church on a hill.  While there was essentially no traffic or crowds for us to compete with in viewing the lupines, we did take note of visitors from both near and far – including international tourists - that chose to take in these special sights as evidenced by car license plates from Texas, Mississippi, Virginia and all six New England states.  We also learned that some visitors actually time their visits to the lupine fields to coincide with sunrise or sunset where the sunlight can dramatically alter the appearance, and beauty, of the lupines depending upon the time of day. You might want to consider a brief trip to enjoy the natural beauty for yourselves. 

​The GGC’s blog returns today but with a twist. The name is now  simply Flowers and Folklore with stories posted on a less regular schedule. I invite garden club members to write stories too and send them to me with pictures. Together we can keep the GGC blog going all year round. 

Today's  blog is about bollen, bollen, and meer bollen (Dutch for bulbs, bulbs, and more bulbs).  I joined the million and a half tourists who descended on the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse in the northwest part of the Netherlands. The garden is open for only eight weeks each year which makes for quite a viewing frenzy.  If the tulips blossomed continuously every day of the year there, I believe that the total number of visitors to Keukenhof would be far fewer. There’s something about a deadline that gets people moving.
 
Unlike the usual visitors who take selfies and make sure they and their friends are in every picture with the tulips, to me it was all about the flowers. The design and theme of the garden are different each year to lure folks back again and again. Even visiting in one of the first weeks will be different from visiting near the end of the fleeting season.
 
More than 100 growers donate seven million bulbs including crocus, daffodils, and hyacinth plus 800 varieties of tulips. When I visited in late April, the crocus and daffodils were gone so the tulips were the stars of the show, sometimes edged with purple hyacinth to help the colors pop. 
 
I watched in horror as some gardeners were systematically picking all the still good looking, yellow tulip flowers in one area. Since tulips only bloom for around a week, the tulip bulbs are hand planted in the fall in layers like a parfait with the later bloomers are the bottom and earlier bloomers closer to the surface. That strategy isn’t enough to ensure continuous blooms, so when an area of flowers is about to fade, they remove them. Surprisingly, the swath of greenery contrasts beautifully with their colorful neighbors. It’s all part of the plan.
 
What do they do with those thousands of bulbs when the eight weeks are up? They simply throw them away. Those 100 growers benefit from their donations with the ability to advertise that theirs are Keukenhof bulbs.
 
The tulip industry is gigantic in the Netherlends. They are grown to sell as bulbs or as cut flowers. The cut flowers are picked before they blossom. The bulb flowers are “topped” after the flowers bloom. In Dutch it’s called “Tulpen Koppen” and is necessary to ensure that the bulbs get as much nourishment as possible. Below is a link to see what it looks like. Prepare yourself for a shock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5cef0JYSMU
 
Garden Club member Anke Clews is from the little town of Hengelo in the Netherlands near the German border. Anke and her family attended many tulip festival parades and events where they often bought strings of tulips and decorated the hood of their car with them.  These flowers came from the topped fields and thus had their moment to shine. When I visited Anke at her home in Grantham recently, I commented on the four gorgeous, red tulips in her front yard. Anke told me she doesn’t know where they came from. She didn’t plant them. Hmmm, I have lots of theories—all of them delightful. There is nothing like a little mystery—especially when it involves flowers. 

Anke's mystery tulip

The time has come for me to put the Friday Flowers and Folklore blog on a hiatus until next spring when the flowers and the stories will start popping again.
 
Thank you to all the folks who invited me into their gardens or told me their stories. I couldn’t have done it without you.
 
Please enjoy these photos that I took this year. 

There’s more to the story about Susan and Jeff Figley’s King Blossom Farm but it has taken two blogs to tell it. There are still plenty of apples ripe for the picking which will continue for a few more weeks. Susan told me that the cold weather makes the Macintosh apples sweeter so she uses them to make much of her apple products.
 
Along with heirloom apple trees, they grow heirloom fruit including tomatoes with names like Aunt Ruby’s Green, Red Zebra, German Green, and Yellow Rainbow. Heirloom fruit may not be as uniformly pretty as their genetically modified relatives, but they are healthier and tastier.

Space is at a premium on their six acre farm so many of the vegetables are grown hanging from string in their greenhouse rather than on the ground which makes cool tomato and cucumber jungles. Another specialty is fresh and dried herbs.
 
Jeff does most of the growing, while Susan cans, preserves, and dries their produce making a huge variety of goodies including pickles, butters, simple syrups (like Sour Cherry and Pumpkin Spice), and a whole array of products that she sells in their little shop “The Heirloom Gourmet” on the property. She also sells her products online at Etsy filling orders from all over the country and beyond.
 
Susan actively seeks old recipes which she collects and creates. She told me it took her two years to talk someone into giving Susan her great grandmother’s zucchini relish recipe. She invited me into her remarkable kitchen where she had just made a batch of pear ginger applesauce which I got to sample. The only thing better than the aroma, was the flavor.
 
In the spirit of small farmers working together to produce quality New Hampshire provisions, King Blossom Farm has partnered with their neighbors including Greg Morneau of Daisy Hill Farm whom Susan refers to as her ‘gardener-in-crime.’ Greg taps his maple trees and Susan helps him boil the syrup, bottle it, add labels that Susan designed, and sell the finished products. Greg and Susan both keep hives on their properties and share the work of tending for the honey bees and collecting the honey which Susan sells in various shapes and sizes. Greg is also the pumpkin man who sells his overflow of pumpkins at Susan’s.

Bardo Farm in Croydon supplies meat that is sold at Susan’s shop and takes orders for fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving. The eggs they sell come from a number of neighbors who raise chickens and can’t possibly eat all their eggs. I have no doubt that farmers sharing their expertise and produce was the way of life for centuries with the “we’re all in this together” spirit that helped them survive.
 
Visiting King Blossom Farm is like a trip back in time. Jeff and Susan love to show people around and teach visitors about their natural form of agriculture.  I brought my grandson there this summer to pick raspberries, and we stayed for an hour as Jeff walked us around his land and green house. My grandson asked a zillion questions that Jeff patiently answered.
 
A big thank you to Susan and Jeff for showing me their farm and letting me interview them.  Here are the links  to their websites:
https://kingblossomfarm.com/
http://www.theheirloomgourmet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kingblossomfarm  
https://www.facebook.com/theheirloomgourmet
https://www.instagram.com/theheirloomgourmet/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheHeirloomGourmet

Elise Kendall, who is the hardworking president of the GGC and my good friend, invited me to go with her to buy a daylily plant for the town library’s Shakespeare Garden. I envisioned a little garden store and was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at farm with a huge field full of daylilies. Actually, most of the plants were flowerless on that September morning, but I could envision how amazing it must look in July with thousands of daylilies in full bloom. Even at that late date, I found some spectacular examples that you can see in the close up photos.
 
Elise introduced me to Milkcan Corner Farm owner Lisha Kimball who helped us pick out a late blooming, creamy peach colored plant which Lisha dug up on the spot and loaded on her tractor and delivered it to our car. For the ten years it took the plant to get from seed to the beauty we purchased, Lisha sold it for the trifling sum of $10—a dollar a year. What a bargain!
 
I was intrigued by the farm, and Lisha told me how it all came too be. In 1963, Lisha and her husband Dan moved from Connecticut to the countryside in Webster, New Hampshire. Dan bought her a horse which she loved to ride and would often stop to talk with the neighbors she met and learned the oral history of the area. They were ‘old timers’ and called her “The City Girl.” She learned that back in the 30s, a large platform sat on Mutton Road where the local dairy farmers placed cans full of fresh milk every day. Later a truck would stop by and pick them up and deliver them to Concord where it was pasteurized, bottled, and distributed. She and Dan decided that the Milkcan Corner Farm was the perfect name for their farm located near the very spot where all the milk was once collected.
 
For years, they grew blueberries, raspberries, and currants. It wasn’t until 2005 that the day lily gardens began.  That year, Lisha was diagnosed with Amyloidosis and told she had two years to live. After much research and DNA testing, she learned that when her grandfather was gassed in World War I, it affected his genes and he passed on this rare disorder to some of his descendents. Facing this grim diagnosis, Dan wanted desperately to help his wife and soul mate. He knew Lisha loved flowers and told her “Be happy. Buy flowers.” So she did.
 
After two years of dialysis and many trips to the hospital in Boston, Lisha received a life saving kidney and liver transplant.  She began her daylily gardens before the transplant and continued to grow the farm with the help of her husband, children, and grandchildren.
 
She buys her cultivars (registered cultivated day lily varieties) from growers who raise them from seeds with the cultivars growing for years, first in green houses and then in fields before they are sold. Lisha plants them in her garden and raises them for another seven years before she splits them and offers them for sale. Lisha purchases about ten new cultivars every year at a cost of $40 each to add to her gardens. 
 
She currently has 400 different cultivars in every color imaginable. She put signs in front of each plant with its registered name and characteristics. My favorite is “Naughty Ballerina” There are 80,000 cultivars registered by the American Hemerocalllis Society so Lisha will always have plenty to choose from. 

Here's the link to Lisha's facebook page so that you too can become her friend.
www.facebook.com/lisha.kimball.1

We folks who live in Grantham have a remarkable gem in our very midst. Right now is the perfect time to visit King Blossom Farm because their spectacular apples are ripe for the picking. Among the many varieties are 135+ year old heirloom Macintoshes and Red Delicious. The heirloom apples may not be as uniform or as pretty as the genetically modified relatives but they are a whole lot tastier and healthier. I bought some Macs and Rambos, which is a French dessert apple that’s great for eating. Amazing!
 
Jeff and Susan Figley purchased the farm in 1983 and chose the name King Blossom because every fruiting spur on an apple tree produces a cluster of six buds—five centered around the largest and first to bloom and called the king blossom. The orchard hadn’t been worked in years so they were given expert advice from the UNH Extension Agency and Cornell. There’s a great video on their website of Bill Lord of UNH Extension Agency showing them how to graft apple trees. Did you know that an apple tree grown from a seed won’t produce apples like the tree it came from? Grafting is the only way to insure getting the same type of fruit.
 
After the tree closest to his driveway was hit by truck, Jeff decided to use that tree for an experiment to graft a number of different kinds of apple scions to grow different apples on the same tree. As I walked around the tree, I saw Red Delicious, Hudson, and Black Oxford on different branches of the same tree!
 
Jeff told me that back in the days of the small farms, farmers would grow about six to eight apples trees of different varieties to ripen at different times. A lot of the farms have been abandoned, especially after the devastating 1938 hurricane. Jeff was able to get a nursery tree of the Scott apple cultivar from Bluffside Farm in Newport, Vermont, near where Susan grew up. Now Scott apples are flourishing in their orchard—a living memory of the past.
 
The lucky orchard has the benefit of their very own bees that Susan and Greg Mourneau of Grantham’s Daisy Hill Farm started keeping ten years ago. Susan loves springtime when she can see the orchard come alive with thousands of pollinating bees, hear their buzzing, and enjoy the heavenly aroma of the blossoms. But don’t wait until spring to visit King Blossom Farm. Take advantage now of the short picking season and head out to the farm and meet Jeff and Susan. They love to share their knowledge and passion for growing apples and fresh vegetables and creating other delights.
 
Here are links their website and more below:   kingblossomfarm.com/

Susan makes delicious products from the apples and vegetables they grow  and sells them in a little shop at their farm and on Etsy. Here  are some more links:

http://www.theheirloomgourmet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kingblossomfarm  
https://www.facebook.com/theheirloomgourmet
https://www.instagram.com/theheirloomgourmet/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheHeirloomGourmet