Well, maybe not done, really, but for me, this was the really tough part. Taking out living plants and bird and lizard habitat. But it was inevitable — the oleanders had truly succumbed to disease and I wanted to get them out and new ones in before winter. And I did replant the bi-color iris in the back of the house outside our wrought iron fence.

The new plants certainly won’t be the lush bird condos they had before, but they’ll grow and we have lots of other places for them to live.

So, the plan is to LOOK at this for a few days and then bite the bullet and put in new plants. I have a good list, thanks to suggestions of my gardening friends and hours spent perusing my favorite garden books.