Camper Fun

We spent this weekend at our camper, a.k.a The Camper, a.k.a. Daffodil Love. When we bought Daffodil Love a year and a half ago it came with a great deck, as long as The Camper itself and about eight feet wide, plus a lower extended deck for a picnic table and grill. Circling this deck and The Camper is a ring of brick, with black plastic inside it and mulch on top. It's an effective means to keep weeds down and maintenance low. It is, however, ugly as sin.

There were a few weigela bushes scattered here and there in the black-plastic-mulch. These added nothing for beauty, but did manage to catch the dogs' long leashes as they wandered around the site. There were also some solar lights that the dogs constantly knocked over. The absolutely only thing worth anything in this homely arrangement was a clematis, placed at the front, easy to see, full and lush. But even this is kind of diminished because the only thing it has to climb is a rusty cruddy arch, and the rusty cruddy arch makes the whole thing look worn and weary.

Last fall I divided a bunch of things from the garden here at home, and Jeff and Ian and I took a day and drove up to the camper. We ripped out the weigela bushes, pulled up the black plastic, and spent an afternoon planting the little garden. Common things: Karl Forrester, daylilies, monarda, nepeta, lambs ears, sedum, hosta, primrose, siberian iris. Nothing fancy. All things tough enough to survive the dogs cables dragging over them or getting jumped on by the dogs as they leap up and down the deck or going a couple weeks without water other than what the rain may bring.

I'm pleased to say the garden is looking much better this spring. It looks like a garden, not a wasteland, for one thing. For another, daffodils are up and look very bright and perky. Here are a couple pictures of flowers that were blooming this weekend. I don't know if it's a fact, but based on the daffs that are blooming there now, I think the latest blooming daffs must all be small ones. These are cute little flowers, and while I didn't want late blooming daffs at home I may have to change my mind. They would like quite pretty in my garden here at home right now, and fill in what seems to be a time of astounding lack of bloom.

The clematis is blooming right now as well, and it looks very pretty. Lots of white blossoms, and interestingly, I noticed one blossom that is purple and white. There were also a number of unopened blossoms, and those might be more of the purple flowers since the white ones are already so profuse. I think there might be two clematis planted in there together. The one nice thing about the garden that was there gets a little bit nicer.

You notice that I did not take the picture in such a way that the rusty cruddy arch appears.

A nice thing that happened this weekend involved irises. I think I've mentioned here before that most of my irises died a couple years ago. Nasty nasty iris borers. I've been missing them (the iris, not the borers) and thinking about getting some new ones.

This morning Don and Mary - two campground neighbors - were planting irises around one of their trees. A friend gave them a great big bunch, more than they needed, and they gave the rest to me! Common purple, they said, and that is fine with me.

Just look at this nice bucket of irises! There is water in the bottom which Mary added, which I would never do, but I poured it out before we came home today and planted them already in front of a row of daylilies on the west side of the deck stair landing. They should do well there, and next year this time, when I now seem to have a lack of anything at all blooming, there should be purple irises, and possibly pretty little late-blooming daffodils as well.