Poolside view

This is the view from my bathroom window. (Click to enlarge; even the big version doesn't do it justice!) It's my neighbor's yard.

The swimming pool has been out of commission since before I moved in here in November 2003; I don't think the liner was completely destroyed yet then, but there were at least a few weeds in there the following summer.

The plants die off over the winter, leaving behind nothing but sad grey brush, and then they come back ever-lusher with the next summer. By 2007, it was full of green, though not quite as wild as it is now; my neighbor's son (who would technically also be my neighbor if he could just stay out of prison long enough) spent a weekend with a friend digging the substantial foliage out of there and told me that he planned to put in a new liner and restore the pool to its former glory.

That seems unlikely now, as the walls appear to be rusted all the way through. He went back to jail a few weeks after that, and is still there now. (You can see only one of his three vehicles in this picture. There was a fourth one too, next to the one you can see, but it was hauled away as evidence.) The weeds grew back, somewhat meekly at first at the end of that summer, but the remaining roots of the plants that had been removed came back stronger than ever in the summer of aught-eight, and now it's just plain crazy.

I am fascinated by this mess. I wish my neighbor would plant a garden in there, but she's not good with steps, and the whole thing probably breaks her heart. She had a contractor there recently to do some work on her house; I had hoped he'd do something about the pool, but I guess it wasn't in the budget. I think her lawn service asked her about it too, but it appears that they'll continue to mow around it for the foreseeable future.