My Daughter Has No Fear

One of the things that needed to be done on the house is to paint the outside trim.  The house itself is vinyl sided, but the trim is wood.  And it is all discolored and looks terrible.   Hubby is not fond of heights, and even less fond of ladders, so I posted on Facebook, "Does anyone know anyone who could paint our trim - inexpensively".  

Daughter Jamie replied, "I'll do it."   Needless to say, I'm a bit nervous about her climbing a ladder to the second floor, but she's a good athlete and quite agile, so I figured I'd give her a chance.   We negotiated a barter in the form of her doing the painting in exchange for me buying a kayak, and the deal was sealed.

To avoid having to go too high on the ladder, she climbed up into the attic to get the trim on that little cupola on the top, then climbed out a bedroom window to stand on the porch roof and get the part about that.

 Here in the front, she did the left half, which is above the porch roof...........

but couldn't do the right half because of huge Rhododendron bushes in the way.

Now.....we were planning on taking them out anway.  We don't like the way they block the front windows.  But we were going to wait until they had blossomed before we did so.   Unfortunately, I wanted the trim painting completed, so they had to go.

Yea, it looks bad now, but I plan to put in a nice flower garden, which should beautify it sufficiently.  It is a very shady spot, so I'd like to find perennials that do well in the shade.  Any ideas?