In a desperate attempt to distract myself from late June's sweltering heat, here are some pictures of my front garden beds.  I can look at these and sigh with relief that 1) the hardest work in these areas has been done, and 2) I don't have to do much but water, deadhead, and possibly fertilize these beds for the remainder of the scalding summer. 

So, without further ado....

Here is the front view of the house when we bought it.  Doesn't look so bad, right?  

Well, it was.  Those big green bushes were barbarys, which were wildly lopsided, neglected, misshapen, FULL of thorns and damn near impossible to remove--we ended up having to dig down about three feet beneath each of them to get out the stubborn, thick roots.   The leaning tree-type thing to the right of the photo was actually a lilac *bush* that had been allowed to grow, unchecked, for decades.  It was in such dire shape--and sheltered so many stinging creatures--that we decided it was unsalvageable.

Here is a shot of the front "in progress".  I think this was last spring.  We removed basically everything planted near the house, made new planting beds, edged them with stone harvested from around the property, added tons of bulbs & young perennials, and planted a couple of evergreen boxwoods near the foundation of the house.  I also heavily re-seeded the lawn where the previous "beds" for lack of a better term, had killed the grass.  Oh, and I discovered a long-overgrown stone path that led to the house & the water spigot, so I uncovered that as well.  From this general area, I was able to salvage over 150 antique bricks, which have now been put into use as a small patio off one of our side doors.

And here is how it looks today, complete with several roses, lots of daylilies, buddleia, hydrangeas (still not in bloom for some reason), some various new evergreens, a good amount of Nepeta (catmint, which the deer hate), shasta daisies and coneflowers, coreopsis, russian sage and other salvias, and many more varieties!

Now I just have to work on the other five or six sides of the house, the huge open field, our fenced in area which the dogs routinely maraud, and of course a "shade garden" in one of the many wooded areas on the property.  Oh yeah, and get rid of the weeds in the lawn.

It never ends!  But at least I'm never bored.