One heck of a back yard Norm! No wonder you want to photograph it. The upside should be that you can see it? Don't get down just because you can't get an image of it on paper.

Dave, I suspect like me you weren't expecting to see trees in a "yard":-)

The OED explains that yard is the american spelling of garden...

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/yard_2?view=uk

Funny thing, language...

You were expecting something a little smaller than a square meter, is that it?

Well, it looks nice to me - I love the patterns silhouetted tree-branches/twigs make against pastel skies.
However, if you want to fix some of the alleged "drabness" - by which you mean a uniformity of lighting across the whole scene - then you need to include directed light *in* the shot. For example, a burst of sunlight through leaves onto opposing trees can be quite spectacular. I humbly offer two obvious shots in my gallery (see references to `trees' in http://pig.sty.nu/Pictures/gallery/gallery.rb?series=goring3) for examples.
As for sorting out the exposure: well, all cameras have far less contrast support than your eyes. When you look at the scene, you can see both the delicate pastel hues and the details in the shadows, when the camera renders them as shades of black. The tricks for reducing contrast are best applied on-scene: either use a graduated ND filter if possible (it might not fit the shape of the scenery, of course - they're best for lining-up along mountain-tops against bright skies, or you might not want to impose a gradient on the highlights if they're a major feature like this), or in this case, you could get a slave flash gun positioned 25-45 degrees to your left: this would fill in the shadows a bit, so the camera has less work to do to keep all the contrast under control.
A final trick: shoot the pic right-aligned in the histogram. I.e., over-expose by maybe 1/3rd-2/3rds an eV. Then you won't need to brighten the shadows (elevating sensor noise into the visible range) so much.
$0.02,
~Tim