A walk on the wild side

Our side yard is in a state of great neglect, and since this is the view from my library desk, I constantly feel guilty that we haven't started to regain control of this area.  I think I'm still in mourning because the view from this window, until last year's drought, was a huge beautiful sasanqua, full of blooms in November, green leaves in the summer and interesting, flowing branches.  Well, it up and died one day. and Ricky cut it down.  Now instead of a shade garden, we have a dried patch of hard dirt.

The male holly next to the sasanqua location is sick--our neighbor's holly died a couple years ago.  Nothing they did could save it.  There's a female holly, plus a camellia, in our narrow side yard, and I worry about them, too.

The female holly appears healthy so far, and the red berries from this tree fill the view from an upstairs window as we walk down the steps at Christmas time.  The creatures like the berries, too, and I've been known to plop down on the steps and just sit, watching squirrels and birds enjoy the holly berries.  If there are still any left, once the Cedar Waxwings descent on our street, the tree is soon bare--and that's okay.

I've been sick this week and home from work several days, not feeling well enough to tackle the yard chores, but well enough to look and fret.  I ventured outside today to take some pictures of the neglect.  I'm going to post these for our "before" shots.  Maybe this will be motivating. 

The cats like the area now.

Rusty rabbit hangs on Ricky's horseshoe gate.

Found stuff display, including Katrina, the cat

 A boy (cat) named Daisy--neutered and sweet--sits on garden bench because
no one else would want to.

Daisy and friend, Stubby with congenital tail deformity (Stubby is spayed and feisty.)

The jungle--Turk's Cap--needs attention and irrigation

Every action has a reaction.  We took down the gutters on the house, because they stayed full of pine needles and were rotting the wood on the house.  We put a French drain on this side because the water was flowing under our house, undermining our beams and foundation.  The water no longer flows under our house, but it also doesn't flow over to the plants on the far side of drain, so now we have arid beds instead of the shade garden..  The shade is gone because of trees dying. 

We need to devote some serious time and attention to this area;  in the meantime, I'll just keep the shades down and read instead.