This Old Hedge

When I moved into this house, it had a Hedge. Not a hedge, like a little group of shrubs providing some kind of border or visual accent in my yard, but a Hedge, designed to fend off invading armies. Once upon a time, it was privet. Once upon a time, it was probably only man-sized, too, but by 2011, it was threatening to overtake my front yard. This is the day I closed on the house, from the street...

And from the inside of the yard...

My aunts came to visit in the spring and in the course of a quiet Saturday visit, it was suggested that maybe we should trim the hedge. I said I was planning to take it out, but my aunt said, "Let's trim it and see how it looks. You don't want to give up such a nice hedge! We can cut it back and it will fill in and look lovely!"

It looked better. It really did. I tried to leave it and let it fill in. Really, I tried to love it, but it was choked with wild roses, bittersweet, and maple saplings. For like, a week, I tried to get used to this new hedge profile, and to appreciate the way it protected my front lawn and gave me privacy. But it was SO ugly and I hated it.

And luckily, my brother likes to dig stuff up. So, since he had a lot of the summer off, I persuaded him to go to town on the hedge. I did a couple hours of digging, sure, but he did the bulk of it. By September, it looked like this.

That big rock in the foreground of the photo was in a the ground among the bushes. We had to dig and lever it out. I think it will become part of the new walkway to my back door...someday. For now, it will just live in the front yard, where it makes the grass impossible to mow.

So now I have a blank slate. I'd like to move the front plantings, some low stuff, a little closer to the road than the hedge was. I did plant some grass, but mostly the weeds (and poison ivy) took over. The soil is terrible and sandy there, and the level of the soil is much lower than the lawn around it. It's basically a huge mess, but it is MY huge mess, and that counts for something.

Eventual plans:
-death to poison ivy in the front yard!
-a bed of low, grassy plants mixed with seasonal flowers
-2 dwarf apple trees in the front yard
-rework the flower/weed bed in front of the windows and the one next to the driveway, before they consume my entire front yard.
-keep one extra parking space in front of the house to supplement the driveway and leave the rest for growing things I actually choose
-use that big rock and a couple others to form an entry to the side yard, possibly with some kind of archway or gate