Planning the flower bed plantings etc. is definitely the fun part. Most people skip to that step because it is the part of the landscape you see- and the most enjoyable part to think about. It's a classic mistake to do so because you will pay a long term price for all the seemingly little details you skip in the beginning. I take it that the advice of a good engineer feels out of the budget for you? Drainage issues are the boring stuff but it's already obvious you're going to have a significant drainage concern. Trenching and piping are okay but eventually trenches can fill with sediment and no longer work. You really, really need to have an engineering consult to determine if what the builder proposes will be adequate. It shouldn't cost more than a couple hundred bucks at most. Perhaps some other neighbors will pitch in since you'll all need the same thing? I used to be a City Planner. I've seen developers pull a lot of crap. Sometimes, they are well-intended but the data they based their information on was faulty. Other times- they're just out to make a buck as quickly and cheaply as possible. At an absolute minimum, call your City offices and see if someone from the City engineering Dept. can advise you on appropriate methods to handle the drainage. In theory, they've already required the developer to deal with this but sometimes really different to say it will work on paper and to see it once everything is going in. Building codes are the 'minium acceptable standard', they are intended to set the bottom threshold. Something can be up to 'code' but not necessarily be a great solution. Also, ask them what level of storm they design for. Sometimes they require them to design the drainage to handle the runoff from a 10, 50, or 100 year storm. You'll want to know which they planned for in your case as it will give you a better idea of what it will handle. As for your other issues- a patio will be much lower maintenance over time than a deck and will certainly last longer. I would also make sure to have a 2' high by at least 3' deep berm for flowers and shrubs against the house as sort of a 'back up' in case your drainage system clogs or is overwhelmed.

When you say full sun & shade does this mean it gets morning full sun and afternoon shade or morning shade and afternoon full sun. This can make a difference because generally morning sun is gentler and afternoon sun is stronger. In the corner, but the wall, I would plant a skinnier, slowgrowing evergreen to add height and interest. Around the mailbox, grow a vine such as clematis - pick one that blooms all season. Some clematis only bloom in the spring. You could edge the front with a variagated lirope. It looks kind of like a pretty grass but it does have purple flower spikes too. In between the lirope and the evergreen (dwarf alberta spruce comes to mind as a suggestion) you could plant a medium height plant. Pick a color scheme and plant accordingly. Black eyed susans or stella d'oro if you want yellow, veronicas, catmint, or purple coneflowers for blue/purple, shasta daisies for white, guara, strawberry candy daylily or geranium "rozanne" (the perennial kind of geranium) for pinks/reds/violet. You could subsitute flowers for interesting & colorful leaves with Heucheras that have reddish/purple tints or hostas with white/green/yellow and/or blue colorings. Only plant heucheras and hostas if you have morning sun in this patch. Afternoon sun will bleach the leaves. Hope this gives some ideas. I picked fairly common plants that you should be able to easily find at a nursery that have a long season of interest. You may see something else that strikes your eye when you go shopping.

Chinaberry is a winner. They are blooming all over Bell county. The berries make good ammo for sling shots. In the olden days the hard parts left after the outer covering has gone away were painted and strung into necklaces. pa

I agee with your comments on the style being very '20s' on the pot, especially. It almost screams it. My gut feeling on the snack set craze being 40s and 50s pushed me in that direction, however. I have found four or five examples of that trademark on various sales sites, and they were all dishes or table service and all had patterns suggestive of the forties to me and that also played into my hunch it's not quite that old. Not one vendor would commit to whom that trademark implied. I did find an exact duplicate of it on a German Beer stein bottom attributed to Dumler/Breiden. Several family members ran and directed that enterprise, doing business over a century, and I feel that certainly at one point in time, they did things other than steins and vases and that history is not on the inet. The palette shape is very popular and it doesn't speak Chech to me anymore than German or English. It also affirms mid-century to me. Here is a very similar set, German, I found. It would be much more helpful if we could find examples of the pot/sugar/creamer design than of just the plate and cup. Here is a link that might be useful: similar snack plate/cup German