I would like to suggest that you quickly fire or otherwise cancel the guy who is going to remove the wall. Then STOP, as Mad Gallica suggests! Then there are just a couple of things to do while you wait for spring. First is to measure your lot and draw up a plot plan that you can use for testing designs. This isn't hard to do, if you have a measuring tape, a straight edged ruler, and some graph paper (use 4 squares to the inch, it works best). Basically you'd want to include all the existing trees and structures, the location of the driveway & walks, utilities and the septic system components. Make copies of the base plan and then get some colored pencils and try different arrangements for "blocking" masses of plants. This will really help you to figure out where you really need borders, how wide you want them to be, and how tall the plants should be. Selecting the plants should come much later in the process. At the same time, go get a copy of one or more of Gordon Hayward's books; The Welcoming Garden is a good one. It describes how to get from square one (where you are) to having a house in a garden. It's got lots of useful techniques for deciding things like placement and depth of borders, selecting a style you'll be happy with, and how to make your design complement the locale. These little "passtimes" might get you interested in gardening to an extent you can't even imagine at this point. If that happens, we'll be here - egging you on. And by the way, welcome to the forum! Nice to see someone who has a blank slate - so many possibilities ahead of you.

This catalog shows some 6" Hat Pins. $4.25 doz. www.newarkdress.com

"Uh, how can a live wire be grounded in the soil and not either throw the circuit breaker or run up a huge power bill?" At 120 V the soil is often not that good a conductor. Unless you manage to have enough current flowing to trip a breaker (normally at least 15 A, and possibly 20 A) the breaker is not going to repsond since no over-current condition exists. The same for power dissipation. Even if you had 10 A leakage, that is only 1,200 W, or 1.2 kW. While you might see a rise on your bill since you are using 28.8 kW-hr per day, depending on the electric rate it might not be that high. At $0.07 per kW-hr it is only about $2 a day, or about $60 a month. Many bills wander around that much from heating and cooling. To even pull 10 amps requires a resistance of 12 ohms, not likely long term. If a GFCI device was present the odds are it would have tripped since they are sensitive down to about 6 mA (0.006 A) of current imbalance.

I for one think everyone has had a great comment here, and I would combine the answers into one plan! If this were my yard, I would enlarge that paved area by about three times - at least out to the ac unit and out to the line of the downspout. I think having that paved area (whether it's concrete, stones, pavers, whatever) would just help define the area, and as it stands now that walkway is too tiny and utilitarian. A bigger area will give some definition to the area as an entryway, a sitting area, etc, and look better in scale to the house. Might even be nice to have a pathway connect from that to whatever other path/walkway you have in the yard. I can't tell from the photo if there is already one there or that is just dirt. I have three rain barrels, and love them. I should note that not a one is connected to a downspout, as DH won't hear of cutting into the downspouts, so I can only dream of the abundance of water I'd have if I did! However, even without that, mine do fill up slowly but nicely, and I do use them with watering cans, either dipped in, or under the spigot, as my barrels are on cinderblocks to give just enough height to get a watering can under. These rain barrels help me cut down on my well use, and IMO are a great idea in general in terms of water conservation. I'm not quite sure WHERE you want to put a garden - along the wall where the ac unit is? To the left of the photo where that bag is? Extending it out from the bag to cover that green area? Is that where the moss is? IMO, you can have a garden almost anywhere, if you have the right plant for the spot. I've put in a bog-type garden in an area where it floods every spring, and which sometimes has standing water well into August. Again, it's the matter of the right plant. Determine just how wet this area is, and do your homework researching plants that like that moisture level and the sun levels you have. Amending the soil helps, but do it as nature would - don't try to change the soil there, but enhance it. It will take some trial and error but I'm sure it can be done. There are many plants you can use. As for moss, I too don't understand why some people dislike it so much. I had a friend who I used to help in her garden, and we live in a very wooded area. She had a quite damp yard, and lots of shade and trees, and along the edge of the lawn she had these wide swaths of moss - a good 10 to 15 feet deep from edge of lawn to woods. She tried for years to get rid of it and get grass to grow. I always told her it looked wonderful, it was soft, green, and from a distance who could tell? She was constantly worried about the resale value of not having a lawn (and it's going on a least 25 years that she's been in the house and worrying about this!). The one downfall to moss, IMO, is that it does rake up very easily when you are raking up leaves, so that is a pain. But other than that, if its green and nothing else will grow there (in terms of lawn, not garden), then that is the plant to have there! I don't know. I guess I'm just a big believer in working with nature and not against her. Good luck and keep us posted on your evolving garden! Dee