Jenfee, we have a similar yard set up (well, we did. A tornado took out a lot of our trees :) - as you have but our front yard is larger... We have a front yard vegetable garden. It is set up to look similar to a community garden in organized, raised beds and containers. It was unique to the neighborhood but now many of my friends here are doing something similar because of shady backyard situations. The other half of our front yard will be more ornamental. For shrubs I am planting blueberries, figs, pineapple guavas. Vines will be bean poles, then there will be tomatoes both vining and bush. For smaller plants and borders there will be thyme, little greek basils, peanuts, mixed with things like nasturtiums, johnny jump ups, calendula and other edible flowers. This area is contained in raised beds with "urbanite" (because I have it) broken concrete stacked to look like stone in curved beds. I just threw in lagsana stuff behind those in a winter and then planted my winter sown stuff in there in spring. Have to start again since trees squashed it all, but it did look pretty darned good! Here is a link that might be useful: edible front yard landscapes

Thanks, Lucy, yes i do have alot to be happy for. :) Theresa and Karyn, the 3rd pic is a rose. i dont know what type. all i know is it has been around a very very long time. My grandmother grew it and now i do as well. It has bunches of small double pink flowers and the plant has a very rambling vine like habbit. The leaves are very small as well. its like a climbing minature rose or something!!! Hummingbirds visit my clerodendrum everyday... i never get them in pic because the are so fast!!!

One way to handle putting an old self into a larger new kitchen is to draw a smaller old kitchen inside of it. All those things that used to live in the den? Or the basement? Or on the high shelves of the kids' closets? Those are still your least used things. It's great to be able to store them in the kitchen now, but you don't want to have the Christmas dishes and turkey roaster and martini glasses between you and the action. As much as you can, put the stuff you use the most away first, and do it in the tightest workflow area you can, best at point of use, designing your point of use at the closest comfortable place to the previous and next steps in the cooking process. If there's room leftover in your working path--like whole empty shelves or drawers, you can put in some of the least used stuff that makes sense in that location (roaster in the cooking zone, etc.) and put the rest of the overage in the more outlying areas, pantry, wherever isn't blocking you from using your kitchen efficiently. I think Buehl has winter dishes in her dish area because there was room (and she has a very efficient kitchen), but if you can tighten up your workspace by putting the Christmas china out, do it! And swap it in at Christmas time, if you use it all day for a month.

Well the root crops would best benefit from the deep bed. For the rest it doesn't really matter. Your bigger issue is going to be the different nutrient and water needs of the different vegetables. Put the broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts together but not near the beans or peas (they can go together). Put the lettuce by the cukes and keep all the squash plants together. I guess since you already have the plants you might as well plant them. They will either survive or they won't. You may have to replace them then but you may discover that you don't have room for everything on your list anyway so if something dies off the other plants will benefit from that space.. But you will have learned some valuable lessons in the mean time - Different plants have different needs. Not everything can be or should be planted all at the same time. And what looks like plenty of room now will look like an over-grown jungle in 2 months. :-) I would transplant the tomatoes into larger pots - no, they can't remain as is - and hold them back for a couple of weeks. But the cukes and zucchini and squash won't survive a double transplanting (into a larger pot and then into the garden) so all you can do is plant them and hope for the best. Next year think about direct seeding them at the proper time rather than using transplants. Same goes for beans. And this winter take the time to learn about the various correct planting dates for each vegetable for your location and the soil temps needed by various vegetables for transplanting. Do that before you invest in all the plants, ok? You might also want to learn about pre-warming garden soil methods so you can plant warm summer crops a bit earlier next year. Too late to do that this year as it takes several weeks. Dave