satisfying yard work

I think nearly all the current landscaping for my house is the original plantings from 1964. And I'm not sure how much the shrubbery has been trimmed in the last 43 years. Nearly all of it towers over my head. Note that these "before" pictures were taken this morning; I cleared out a bunch of the hedge last weekend, and neglected to document it.
This is looking east. Notice the glorious corrugated plastic privacy screens.



You can see through the shrubs a little bit on the left. Last weekend I took out a juniper that was growing entirely within some other plants. It all looked really, really bad.


It seems the previous owners' goal was to have dense, tall greenery running parallel to the patio for privacy. Notice the green shrubbery obscuring the rest of the tree trunk and the rest of the backyard. It was pretty thick on the left side of the tree, too, before I started pruning last weekend. (Why are the people here obsessed with privacy? The landscape architecture student who designed my xeriscaping is convinced the previous owners were nudists.)

Okay, so here's what it looks like now (sorry I didn't get the same shots):