On the Trail of the Forefathers

We're on the North Shore of Boston for a few days enjoying the sea breeze and doing some genealogy research on my garden man's family.  The family originated in Watertown, then moved to Ipswich and then moved on to Bradford, part of Haverhill.

We were in Ipswich and stopped at the 1677 Whipple House.  As we parked and got out of the air-conditioned car, I was overwhelmed --and literally transported back in time--by the scent of the privet hedge in bloom.  Taken back by the scent to my grandmother's and my great-grandmother's gardens in the early 1950s.

I wish this blog had digital smell!

I went around a corner of the house in the back

and smelled viburnum and lilac

and saw short, clipped grass with clover

leading up some stepping stones and gravel drive

to some evening primrose--

and felt transported not by smell alone, but by sight also.

A good, old-fashioned garden 

with dependable, traditional plant specimens and no chemicals!

I checked out the kitchen garden when we discovered the house was not open.

It was typical for the 1600s:  narrow gravel or crushed shell paths, raised beds, herbs and flowers intermingled and contained within a wood fence right off the kitchen door.

Still, we were traveling back in time a little further to 1636 in our genealogy

and I wanted to find a house and garden that matched that period.

Surprise, behind the main house was a replica of a first period, Puritan home

from the 1630s first settlement in the area.

Now, that's what our progenitor would have lived in 

at the time he was in Ipswich: thatched roof, wood chimney,

a single door with nail stud patterns, single window high on the wall under the eave,

and a rustic fence around a kitchen garden.

Here's what I found inside!

Not much luck so far this year with the garden 

means a hungry winter ahead!