More trimming

I start pruning and get carried away.  After I finished pruning the apple trees I worked on the shrubs in front of the house.

Before:

As I started to trim them in 2009...

Before I started in 2012...

After...

Hmm...  in the photo the 'shorter' shrub now looks wider than tall.  In 'person' it looks better. This is a shrub that was allowed to grow and grow and should have been trimmed many years ago.  All the greenery is on the outside of the shrub so it is hard to trim it back.  I hate to cut down trees and shrubs, but this Summer it may be the end of the line for this shrub.  It depends on - now that the interior is opened up to sun - whether greenery will grow and fill inside.

I also trimmed a couple feet off the tops of the two arborvitae bushes.  These bushes also had been let go over many years.  Over the years I have been cutting the height down.  The 2009 photos was not the first time I trimmed their height down.  I'm not sure I can 'save' - or trim to be smaller - these bushes either as I may be limited in how I can sculpt them to be smaller in size. Still, for arborvitae I have noticed that greenery will re-grow out of trunks and branches to fill in open areas exposed to sun.  So there is hope.