Our Christmas Tree
(If you get that close, you can’t tell it’s a foot-tall rosemary bush.)
Holly
And for my Wiccan readers, the holly from my side yard and the oak from my back. Extra points to the person who can explain about the oak and holly kings.
Tiny Cat Pants 
You have a HOLLY TREE? You have the best land ever!
And, ta-da, from my old graduate school days at Cornell studying Old Irish and Celtic mythology (Lionel Joseph, thank you!) Holly and Oak kings are two halves of the same god in old Celtic life–known variously and fabulously (in the old sense) as Cernunnos or Herne the Hunter (I just yesterday finished rereading Susan Cooper’s five part reworking of that old mythology, which ends with Herne the Hunter vanquishing the dark; it’s for adolescents, but like most good children’s lit, also for adults). In the spring and mid-summer, oak rules; when leaves fall, the holly is ascendant; But just as one is at its peak, the other is slowly regenerating….just like the sun in the dark of winter or the dark at bright and burning Lammas.
Not only do we have a holly tree but we cut off all the dead branches on the one side and it seems to have perked up 100%. Everything that we trimmed this fall seems to have responded very well.
After all this rain, I’m considering just declaring the whole yard a rice paddy. Ha. I’m sure the neighbors would love that.
Well, pay attention to where it’s pooling, and don’t plant anything important in those spots. You might want to consider a nice damp-happy ground cover in those places instead.
Ha, I wish! Instead, I think it’s indicating where I’m going to have to reslope part of my front yard, to move water away from my house instead of making a little pond right near it. I mean, I guess I could keep the pond, but I’m not sure that’s good for the foundation.