Some neighborhoods are nearly barren after their residents moved on, took what they could and left their houses to their fates. But little signs of their presence still remain in the wild, like driveways gobbled by grasses or stop signs where there’s no traffic anymore.

One of the prettier remnants of their lives here are the flowering trees and shrubs that once decorated their yards but are the one thing that couldn’t be taken with those who left.

This lilac bush, once part of a border, gives a splash of color to this wide field. In the back, hiding in the trees, an old house slowly falls like its neighbors did one by one before it.

In the prairie neighborhoods, everything is some shade of brown or green, as the plain weeds and loose grasses have won the battle against the more delicate, cultivated flowering plants, and have choked most of them off. A few pretty things, though, hold their own out here.

This flowering cherry tree, a few streaks of pink against a barn-red house, was once along a fence but now stands beside an open field. With nothing there to block the sunlight, and nobody to shear its long, sloppy branches, it grows rangy and wild.

Years ago, someone buried the bulb that bears this little tulip, probably with many others.

Now it has to fight with thick grasses for rain and sunshine, yet still summons the strength to make a showing each spring.

It serves as a pointless display that nobody will see, a single surprise of beauty in an area where dreariness prevails.

The closest house left here is a full block over, and rots like an old country home.

Its drama wasted on a burned-out neighborhood, this red azalea has gone mad, streaming through a rusty old fence and past rotting wood posts, reaching out in all directions.

The houses here get stripped, the streets crumble or are piled with trash, but nothing happens to these plants, and nobody tries to steal or damage them.

They have no other use than to be lovely, and thus have little value in these parts, remaining essentially invisible, except for a few weeks each spring when they demand to be noticed.