Japanese Garden Gone Bad - An Anarchist Approach to Yard Work

The other night I drove over to my girlfriend's house for french dip hamburgers and afterwards she and I sat outside watching her mother do yard work. She was trying to keep the Japanese garden at bay which the previous owners had planted 20 years before. Unfortuantely most of the juniper, rhodos and hollies have grown like godzilla on steroids. We sat and watched until conscience got the best of us and I got up and took the hatchet out of my truck and chopped down a rhododenron. It felt good. I thought of that crazy anrachist Bakunin who I'd done a paper and presentation on in college. His big quote is "the urge to destroy is a creative urge". More people should become anarchist when it comes to their yards. One of the best lawn care moves I've ever seen was when my dad cut out over a dozen big pine trees that lined two sides of the yard.
Too often people plant plant and plant and then don't have to the heart or gumption to take out plants that have outlived their use or beauty. Too often people let stuff that has grown way too large for its location remain in place, obscuring windows, blocking walkways, taking up space a new planting would enhance.
So today I went back over to my girlfriend's house while everyone else was a work (its odd to not have a job but thats a different post) and attaked some of the overgrowth. I chopped down a large American holly, three more big rhododendrons, another fat holly tree, and slung a machete around to trim the junipers and a couple of other bushes. Then I dug out a couple of stumps from the fat holly shrub. It was dirty, hot, and sweaty work. It felt good.