Okay, this one I can relate to. I live in Arizona and my once beautiful garden now looks just like this! A sharper focus might make the leaves look even more crisp and dried out.
I like the idea of this photo. If you could isolate just one dead leaf and focus on it then your eye would have a place to land, if that leaf was in the rule of thirds that would help the composition too. Good Job.
Good idea, showing the dead flowers. However, the background is distracting, and the foreground of the picture is out of focus. I think a greater depth of field and a different angle would have helped.