Year in, year out, we fortified "the garden" with bags of crap (chicken, steer, cow, unicorn). The garden is in the upper back third of our lot, about 30' above our driveway. We hauled, tilled, weeded, and planted. Planted plants grew for a month. Summer hit. Planted plants died. Or lingered. Weeds thrived. Gophers dined.

In year 20, on Mother's Day, we built two above ground planter boxes, complete with hardware cloth bottom to foil gophers. We filled the two 6'x5'x11" boxes with "garden soil" from a local sod farm. We're getting results. Tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cucumber, and pumpkins. I would rather grow burritos and lemon-lime shave ice, but this year, vegetables.

We won't recoup this investment for years, but drought & infinitely deep sand haven't killed this garden. No weeds in year one (and plastic over the boxes after harvest). No gophers, easy maintenance, pictures.

The morning glory photos on page 3 are from a flower garden growing on the 8' chain-link fence behind our relo at school.

N.B. Holding down [option] when using Develop::Detail->Sharpening->Masking in LR4 "tells" me what to leave in/out when cropping.