before/after

Yesterday was the big day…the day I’ve been rambling about for the past two weeks.  The weather was perfect, chilly in the 50s and then warming up to 60, especially in the sun.  We started before 10am, started by doing the easy stuff.  We picked out all the leaves out of the rock.  Sounds easy, and it is, but that rock is super sharp.  I guess I shouldn’t complain, a lot of the sedum and hens and chicks I planted last year came back this probably from the leaves protection from the winter.
Then we dug out the ugly sedum that lined the top of the rock garden.  You can kinda see it on the other side of the low growing cedar.  These have grown way to big for this space, and neither Chris or I liked them.  I was thinking I’d have to replace them with something, and coleus was the plan until I thought of something that was a perennial.  But now we’re both thinking it doesn’t really need anything there.  I will get some more creeping sedum and hens and chicks to go in the rock. 
So far we’d only worked maybe an hour.  Next came the big part, ripping out the shrubs along the house.  I’m pretty sure these were planted when the house was built.  So they are 30 year old shrubs about as tall as I am.  There are four plants in the area next to the garage, and three up behind the tree.    The bunch of shrubs by the garage were slowly dieing, you can see the brown patches in the pic.  Both bunches had completely out grown the areas they were planted.  Our walkways were cut in half b/c of them.  We spent the rest of the day cutting them down, and then digging up the stumps and cutting down the stumps. 
You can see how it looks now, you can actually see the brick!  Mom asked me if it looked empty, and I really don’t think it does.  That must really mean I didn’t like what was in there!!!  In May I’ll transplant some hosta, and fern into both areas.  It’ll be a nice fern garden that won’t take over the entire front yard.  Today I’m sore, and definitely not moving as fast as yesterday.  We do plan on doing some more work, although neither one us know how much.

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