Set 3 of Lupine Festival Seasons

Bob Jensen at Trinity University 

Every year there's a Lupine Festival in Sugar Hill. This year the Festival is June 1-June 15, 2012. In 2013 the date range is unfortunate. Due to a cold and late spring, even with snow still on the ground on June 1, we had to wait until the second week of June for the lupines to start blooming. T Our furnace has run most every day since August 2012.

Lupine are very aggressive field flowering perennials that prefer bad soil. After lava flow covered a wide swath of Mt. St. Helens, lupine were among the first plants to emerge in the lava beds.

 

Snow on Memorial Day 2013

My good friend and sometime neighbor came up from Boston to check on snow damage in his yard
He took the following picture from a parking lot at Cannon Mountain where ski season had prematurely ended

A week later the lupines were in bloom in our wild flower field

The is St. Mathews Chapel (summer only) about a half mile down the road

 

For a description of lupine fields along our road, go to http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0027pL 

There is a fantastic spot in northern New Hampshire for wildflowers with mountains on the horizon (though not usually covered in snow at that time of the year). Go to Sugar Hill, NH in mid-June for the lupine festival. From about June 10th to 17th there are fields of lupines that bloom beneath the White Mountains. In Sugar Hill on Sunset Road there is a 12 acre field completely filled lupines that has Cannon Mountain and Mt. Washington in the background. These lupines come in shades of blue, purple, white and pink. The attached image was taken at sunrise in the lupine field on Sunset Road in Sugar Hill. The back roads around Sugar Hill contain a number of spots where there are large concentrations of lupines, some strategically located near red barns and white churches. This spot is not only great for grand landscape shots, but is also macro photography heaven, the dew drops and little insects on the lupines also make great subjects. But be careful, one morning at sunrise I was intently photographing the sunrise and moved towards a tree to include it in my shot. I startled a mother moose and calf who I did not realize were on the other side of the tree and they ran right in front of me. Of course having a 17-35mm lens on my camera with an ND grad and polarizing filter made it a little tough to get a good shot of the moose.

About 5 miles away is Franconia Notch state park where there are lots of nice waterfall opportunities, my favorites include The Basin, the Falling Waters Trail (Stair Falls and Cloudland Falls are both wonderful) and the Flume.

This area in early to mid-June can't be beat. To do grand landscape photography in New England requires a little more work than in the national parks out west, but Sugar Hill is one of the better locations in New England for the kind of photography you are interested in.

-- Ed McGuirk , April 06, 2002; 06:15 A.M. Eastern

 

Photographer Wes Lavin often visits up in these mountains
He occasionally allows me to post some of his pictures

 

This is a Wes Lavin springtime photograph of the Iris Farm down the road
Sadly, the farm is now vacant with an uncertain future
I would like to see it become a living farm for tourists

Below is a picture that I took when above the  picturesque Iris Farm
This photograph shows the Kinsman Mountain Range backdrop of this old farm

This is the barn across the road from Polly's Pancake Parlor (about a mile down the road)

This is a lupine about half way into fully blooming

This is what lupine blossoms look like in July after the blooms fade and the seed pods ripen
Lupines are field flowers
You don't want them in your garden because they will take over everything else
and are very hard to get rid of (as I learned the hard way)

 

 

Set 1 Photographs of the Lupine Festival in Sugar Hill --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Lupine/Set01/LupineSet01.htm

Set 2 Photographs of the Lupine Festival in Sugar Hill  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Lupine/Set02/LupineSet02.htm

Wildflowers Set 1 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Wildflowers/Set01/WildFlowersSet01.htm    

Erika's Flowers of the Field --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2008/tidbits080625.htm

A Walk Down Lovers Lane --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090623.htm

Texas Wildflowers Set 1 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Wildflowers/Texas/WildflowersTexas.htm

Texas Wildflowers Set 3 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Wildflowers/Texas02/TexasWildflowersSet02.htm

 

Our cottage's history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/CottageHistory/Hotel/Brochure/Brochure1900.htm

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

 

On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm

Bob Jensen's Blogs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Our address is 190 Sunset Hill Road, Sugar Hill, New Hampshire
Our cottage was known as the Brayton Cottage in the early 1900s
Sunset Hill is a ridge overlooking with New Hampshire's White Mountains to the East
and Vermont's Green Mountains to the West

 

 

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/