Peaky prettification

While I was busy feeling useless during the bathroom demolition, I picked up a shovel and tidied up the garden beds around peaky.

Before:
(Hey... I forgot there used to be garden lights at the cottage. This photo is from our first visit last fall with the real-estate agent. It explains the black plastic spikes that I've been digging up. I wonder what good those lamps are to them now without the spikes to hold them in the ground?)

And after:
Step 1, clean up the bed. All that remains is a cute clump of frog's belly sedum.

And with a relocated hosta:

I'd like to put a small shrub (potentilla maybe? or a spirea?) at the corner of the bed near the door, and some climbing something - maybe a rose - at the back corner on a trellis.

I've also dug up the bed to the right of the door and gotten bitten by angry little yellow ants who didn't like me overturning their nest. Stupid ants.

That other bed also has a transplanted hosta.

I'm trying to fill the gardens with ultra-low maintenance "won't die if you neglect to water me for weeks" plants. Flowering shrubs. Hardy, clump-forming perennials (I'm done with the invasive plants - yarrow, ajuga,  I'm looking at you! - and the rampant self-seeders - geranium? columbine? I'm looking at YOU now!)

I also want to pick up some vinca to replace most of the under-the-cedars garden that's on the slope down to the water's edge, because nothing's growing well in that spot due to lack of sunlight.

Inch by inch, the cottage gets better.

Grand plans for the future (i.e. Not this year, no way no how!) include some raised beds behind the bunky for a bit of a vegetable garden. With some chicken wire to keep the creatures at bay.