Flower Power

I've been trying to work on the landscaping some at the new house....mostly so the neighbors know we are trying to make the house look nice despite the giant blue dumpster in the driveway.  Just to refresh your memory, when we moved in, the front landscape looked like this:

It looks more like a jungle than a flower bed.

The first Saturday (the day the deck came down), my friend Ann and I worked on weeding some of the front beds making them look more like this:

A giant improvement to be sure.

And I've been slowly working on cleaning up the rest of the beds.  The mailbox flower bed was the last one to get done before the bees attacked.  Now that I've gotten some of the weeds and grass out of the way, it's obvious that someone put a lot of time and effort (and probably money) into the landscaping at the house.  There is a huge variety of plants and they are well spaced and thoughtfully planted.  I, however, and not a landscape expert, so I have no idea what most of them are.  If you can identify any of these, let me know.

We have a lot of these.  Most are planted close to the house where it is somewhat shaded.
They are pretty and seem to have done well even with all the weeds.

Some very pretty purple flowers planted near the lamp post.  I love them.

I have no idea.  It might be a weed, but it seemed to be deliberately planted and
 had some pretty white blooms on it.

Kind of spindly purple flowers.  I'm hoping they'll fill out now that they can breathe.

Very pretty ground cover that actually kept some of the weeds down in their area.

More of the mystery plants.  This one is off by itself and may need to be transplanted.

Crazy bush thing next to the front porch.  I don't really care for it, but it's big and it's  there.

White flowers on a bush near the corner of the house.
 They kind of remind me of hydrangeas, but the plant looks wrong.

The ugly bushes along the side of the house.  No one has any idea what they are.

A close up of the bushes on the side of the house.
They have some kind of bloom pod or berry on them.

Mystery plant.  It might be a weed, but there were several of them planted at regular intervals.

And the tree that is on either side of the garage door.  We think it might be a lilac?
Whatever it is, it's blocking the sidewalk, so it's going to have to be transplanted.  If it will take it.

There's still more work to do outside.  I have two more beds to clear out totally including this one:

And many holes to fill in where weeds chocked out any plants that were there.  But it looks better already, so that's something.