The Great Garden Debate

I don't know what it is about landscaping our yard that is so hard, but making decisions seems to be terribly difficult.  Am I the only one who feels this way?  Here's some background:  When we moved into this house, there was very little landscaping that was done.  Everything was nicely put together, but there were very few features.  A deck, a tree, a small patio, a lawn, and a dog run.  Not a whole lot has changed there, but we did remove the dog run and build some very nice garden boxes.  The only problem is that after about a year, our neighbor's tree began to shade the boxes for the majority of the day.  Ever since, when March rolls into April, I begin voicing my complaints about how our yard is laid out.  Every idea I come up with on making alternate garden locations are shot down by my wife (with good reason... it would be a bit ridiculous to have random garden sections in the middle of the lawn...).

I even have odd/desperate ideas enter my brain like building a deck above our house for a garden; Plenty of sunlight up there!  Of course, there are things like residential code, aesthetics, and logistics.  I am pretty sure I'd be breaking some kind of law by building a garden above my house.  I'm also fairly certain it would look silly and very likely trashy.  Furthermore, imagine hauling all of that dirt up to the roof to fill whatever box/deck thing I'd put up there.  Then imagine how heavy that would all be once it was watered! I'm pretty sure the wonder-roof-garden would end up a wonder-living room-garden in no time.

Another idea is to tear down our fence and plant a garden in the open space behind our house.  Now we're definitely talking about a code violation... aesthetics would be much better for sure, and logistically it'd be a piece of cake.  Well... 2/3 ain't bad.

Often times, when I'm getting bogged down on a design at work and can't figure out how to make any more forward progress, I'll just let out a loud sigh and/or grunt of frustration and completely start all over.  Perhaps that's the way to go.  I'll just bulldoze the back yard and start fresh.  A clean slate.  Endless possibilites... well, bounded by our property lines I suppose...

No, no, I'll tell you what the easiest solution is.  Buy a house with a yard that has already been perfected by a master gardener.  Why should I bother with all of that "thinking" and manual labor when I can just leverage the creativity and sweat of someone else??

Or, I could forget about a garden and just get one of these cool yard offices.  I don't work from home all that often, but I sure would if I had one of these babies!

This is an Office Pod. Very cool.