Abandoned but not Forgot

Overgrown.

Sitting silent.

Something pretty still lingers.

The path I could extend into the old shade garden.

Below: Remnants of the once pretty shade garden. Still had it's shape, it just needed to have a little time spent clipping and such.. All gone now

I'm blessed/cursed with a large yard. When I first started gardening (over 20 years ago), I had a shade garden on one side of the yard and a somewhat sunny garden on the other side. The shade garden had a huge Rhododendron and hostas and lots of pretty native plants I moved from my woods. It was very pretty, but eventually it was left on it's own to survive, which it did quite well. Unfortunately, last year we had to have our drain field redug, and in the process my shade garden was demolished. I came home from work with not a stick standing and tons of red clay exposed , giving me heart palpatations.  I simply didn't have the energy to do anything and there it's sat for almost a year. Weeds growing and sapplings, a pretty, but running amok, groundcover. So overwhelming. I still don't know what to do. They didn't smooth the soil so it's uneven ground with large rocks here and there. I'm thinking this fall we'll just put all the leaves over there, hoping to keep the weeds at bay and maybe during the winter I'll have some doable ideas.  One thing bouncing around in my mind is a fire pit. I could continue the gravel over there and create a circular sitting area with a fire pit in the middle. I could get my young and strong men to flatten out the area and in the Spring when we get another load of gravel for the garden, and  apply some there too.  What do you think?