You've come a long way...

When we first moved into our house there were a lot of overgrown holly bushes.  We decided to cut some of them way back and then remove a few others.  We discovered some azaleas that were being smothered and strangled under the holly bushes.  They looked so straggly and pathetic that my husband wanted to just dig them up and discard them along with the holly bushes.  I agree; doing that would have made it easy to start afresh and go buy a few new pots of azaleas, and it would have spared us a few seasons of barren-looking landscaping in the front. 

You know me, though.  Not one to give up on anything unless I've had a chance to try and nurture it back to its prime, (plus, did I mention I'm stubborn?) I set about trying to restore them to what I thought their former beauty might be.  I didn't even know what their flowers would look like if they were given a chance.  So I cut them WAY back to the point that they looked like little stumps of wood sticking out of the ground, read up on azalea care and crossed my fingers. 

A season after I cut them back, two of the azaleas (small green bushes in front center) are sprouting new foliage.   

Three of the azaleas, center. 

Three more of them. 

Well, a few years (and many coffee grounds, layers of mulch, careful prunings and bug spray concoctions later) they are starting to fill out and look good! 

Sometimes, the victories that are hardest won are the sweetest.