When I moved to Texas in 1999, the front yard of the house I lived in sported beautiful Queen's Crown vines at nearly every turn.

Overgrown in areas where they weren't meant to seed, they were finally taking the vital sunshine away from ferns that had been there for decades.

This is a picture of what the project I started looked like.  Although this is the opposite window on the same side of the house, there really wasn't much difference between one side and the other.  The awnings, made of cut rippled plastic, were old and so long that they kept light out of the house.  They had to go.

When I got rid of the Queen's crown and exposed the ferns, this is what I had to work with.

The windows needed resealed and repainted.

I also decided to paint the trim and shutters a dark green so I did all that first.

I used a picture of a lizard to make a template for these cut-outs on the new awning that I cut from plywood.

Then came the un-taping of the windows, the addition of two trellises for the ferns to climb, and the actual untangling of the ferns.  That job alone was like untangling two hundred feet of Christmas lights with thorns (the hooks get big!).  Then I had to cut away the dead stuff and string it up to grow so when I was done...

It looked like this: 

I added Forest green curtains to the room behind the window and the ferns just thrive with sunlight and water.  The run-off from rains ends up in these beds so no one has to waste water to keep it alive.  I also added another variety of fern to the ground area in front of the trellises.

It still looked great when I left to return to Arizona in 2003.