The Cultivated Jungle

Day 217: When I moved into my home thirty years ago, the yard was an almost barren canvas. Aside from a 10'-wide wooded belt separating my property from the one adjacent to it, the only "landscaping" (a term I use in a very loose sense) consisted of a hedge of yews, a 150' tall, 13'-around Douglas-fir and a short weeping, flowering somethingoranother tree in a rock circle in the front yard. It was a lovely little tree, but I was never able to identify it. It had leaves like a cherry, flowers like an apple and formed fruits similar to chokecherry, which it definitely was not. It became known as the Whatzit Tree, and for years, it stood as the only relief in an otherwise empty yard. It eventually succumbed to a combination of insects and the Sapsuckers which loved to drill for them, but by then, I had begun planting trees and shrubs or, as I thought of it, habitat. These days, the planting urge is still upon me, but I'm running out of space for things with strong root systems which can't be planted too near the septic tank. My yard is still a long way from being an impenetrable jungle, but the birds love it. "Build it, and they will come," they say. I planted it, and they did.