You've gotten some great advice here. I'll just second the advice to build raised beds in there and try square foot gardening. A 6"x8' long board is about $4 and it'll take three of them to make a 4'x8' bed. If you don't have any tools, this is still doable. Ask the lumberyard to cut one of the three boards in half ~ those will be your ends (they'll make one cut for free). Then all you have to buy is a hammer and some 16-penny nails, or a drill and 3" decking screws (drilling in screws many times is easier and makes for stronger connections, so might be worth the twenty bucks for a cheap drill) and assemble them when you get home. It's super easy to make the beds if you first shovel a few inches of soil from your walkways over into where you plan to put the permanent beds. Then, assemble the wood frames around those long piles and rake them down. No extra fill dirt needed. (Do stand back and look after you get the long piles done ~ it's funny to see your garden looking like Boot Hill the day after the gunfight. ;) I did some quick calculations and you can fit a LOT of beds in your space! That's how many will easily fit, leaving a few feet extra on one end. Those are all 4'x8' beds with three foot wide walkways horizonatally and 2' wide walkways vertically. It's very important to have nice, wide paths that are easy-peasy to get down with a wheelbarrow or garden cart or you'll be back to hating working in your garden. Making them wider if you want wouldn't be bad either ~ you have plenty of room. The vertical ones need not be as wide as the two main ones since you likely won't be hauling a wheelbarrow down those, though if you think you will, by all means take out a line or two of beds and make them winder. Dress it up somewhat by leaving out a couple beds in the middle and putting a pond or fountain in with a bench so you can enjoy being out there. Maybe adding an arbor in one corner over a sitting area would be nice ~ just cut out another one of the beds over there. Want a compost pile, potting bench, or whathaveyou? Omit a bed or two and put it in. Make it pretty out there and you'll be more likely to be in it more, thus staying on top of things and not letting them build up into bigger problems that make you hate it again. Put a fence around your garden, too. Even just an ornamental one. It defines the space and makes it easier to keep the inside organized. It'd be nice to put a 2' wide bed all the way around the edge of the garden, too. That way, the fence can double as a trellis. Again, just shorten some of the beds, or rearrange them. You don't have to build all the beds in one year either. Just do as many as you can afford, then plant the rest in bush beans, a cover crop, blocks of corn, or melons ~ they'd have plenty of room to sprawl. Buy some concrete reinforcement wire to make tomato cages out of. Cut it into 6.5" pieces, form into a circle, and wire together ~ cut the bottom wire off leaving the vertical wires for legs to stick into the soil to help "stake" the cage in place. Learn about square foot gardening, either on the forum here about it, the website devoted to it or buy the book. It's really a nifty technique. You don't have to use the soil mix recommended, especially since you likely have enough soil already ~ just use the planting guidelines. It'll help you plant more intensively, which keeps weeds down and moisture in since the plants are so close together they act as a living mulch. And SFG encourages you to plant things all in together instead of blocks or sections of each type of veggie. Doing it this way, with bush beans under your okra, lettuce tucked in snugly beside your kale, etc., makes the whole thing look prettier. Lay out some more of that concrete reinforcement wire atop your wooden beds and nail in place, lining up the wires with the sides. Then, use some small bolt cutters to cut out sections of the wire to make 12"x12" squares instead of 6"x6" and you'll have your square foot guides all done and will be ready to plant. Here's a bed done that way already, with a few other size planting guides laying atop the main one: And definitely plant flowers in there. Lots and lots of flowers! Yes, they attract pollinators and other beneficial insects, and because some kinds do deter other pests. But mostly plant them just because. As one of my fave quotes says: "Vegetable gardens feed your body, while flower gardens feed your soul."

Hal, I also have a dry environment. I keep the compost piles covered with plastic during the summer to try to keep moisture in, but I find that the heat of composting will dry out the pile, too. I have seen both fresh (green) grass clippings, and freshly pruned tree chippings (ramial wood) get up above 140F and dry themselves out long before they are finished composting. For the ramial wood, I'll just have to turn it when it overheats. For the grass clippings, I think I'll dilute them with more leaves to prevent the overheating.

Thank you for the comments and info. The tree is in Ljubljana, Slovenia where we are living for a couple of years. I've seen this type of tree in Art nouveau type of paintings but assumed it was just a stylized painting of a tree...I didn't think there was really a tree like it until we saw this one the other day. I'm amazed that 'flora' guessed that it was growing in Europe! (I forgot to mention that) And the link with a photo of Robinia pseudoacacia looks very similar to my photo so I think that's probably what it is. Now how can I grow a tree like that??? I'm going to add a photo of the trunk..it is very interesting also.

I remind myself of a letter I saw in Dear Abby one time, where someone asked, "What is wrong with me? I would cry at the opening of a new K Mart." :)) The thing about it is, I never cry in my own life...you know how people say they can't stop crying and don't know why. I don't cry. I am fairly stoic about many things, but I cried like a baby when I saw the Budweiser Clydesdales and I used to cry just seeing my daughter marching in a parade when she was in school and when she graduated. I will tear up over a cute baby or a pet. I do get depressed for days over cruelty to animals. Some things I just cannot stand at all. But, I don't usually cry about it. Maybe if I did, I would get over it faster. I dunno.