What has Lived

That seems to be the big question in my garden right now: What has lived? It was a weedy mess before, but after a week of hard freezes, and SNOW, everything pretty much loooks like this:

It is all enough to make you want to give up and start blogging about home decorating. In addition to being a mother with a full time job, computer issues, squrriels (bastards!), I'm going to throw the newest member of our family under the bus.

Kitty, (AKA Free-loader) was a neighborhood cat that hung out our house for a while. About six months ago we noticed that she was getting very skinny and we started feeding her. That was pretty much the end of it - we were adopted. She is incredibly sweet and tame and charmed her way into our decidedly "not-pet-people" family. While she is an angel in the house, she is all cat in the garden. She's made several exits holes in our fence and regularly poos in the sand box. Good thing she's cute.

I'm trying to focus on the positive and figure out what has lived. The amarylis from last year is coming back, along with many of the very sturdy crinum lilies.

I didn't get my winter annuals in the ground on time (October is ideal) but I did plant a few straggelers, and they are steadily pumping out some flowers. Good thing: I ALWAYS need this color in my life.