My lost jungle

When Rob and I moved into our home, we inherited what we have come to think of as a "grown-up yard" - the kind of yard the requires stuff like hedge trimming and lots and lots of weeding. It seems that we, however, are infants when it comes to lawn care, both in the effort we are willing to put in and the aesthetic that pleases us.

I suppose I should confess that one of my favorite yards in Greensboro is on North Elam (the piece that runs between Cornwallis and Pembroke) which is so overgrown that the house is barely visible except in the barren winter. In the spring, though, the mass of trees and shrubs erupts into a rainbow. That's our aesthetic: wild, lush, private.

Over the last four years, we've let our grown-up yard expand itself into a little jungle in our backyard. Enormous ferns and other assorted volunteers created a screen from our neighbors and a happy roaming ground for our dogs. Despite our love of the result, we've toyed with getting it back under control for a couple of years now, to make it more accessible for us (the necessity of which became clear recently when we were unable to reach the dogs through a patch of brambles as they dug a chipmunk from its hiding spot) and prepare for the day when moving enters our immediate game plan.

I hadn't really considered my emotional attachment to my little jungle, though. Yesterday, I came home from meetings to an empty gap in the yard where a dogwood once grew; as the leaves on our other dogwood faded to orange, this tree turned brown and crisp, a fact I tried to ignore until an arborist pronounced our poor water-starved tree dead. Today, our volunteers were removed, leaving a huge empty yard, populated by our sole dogwood, a few pines and one spindly sapling. The dogs seem confused. I feel exposed and lonely. I had no idea that my plants were keeping me company until today...