How does my garden grow?

Without a regular job to go to (thanks, economy), I've been making like Candide and working on the garden. It's still mainly a blank canvas, and to be honest I don't know where I'm going with it. If I had the time, energy, or upper body strength it would require to put in hard landscaping I would have sorted it out by now, but the fact is I just don't have any of those things, so I'm taking it piece by piece. Do you like the herb garden & lettuce patch I planted in some freebie wine boxes from the wine store? Cute, huh?

I know you're supposed to live in a garden for a year before you start doing anything to it, to get to know it and let it do its own thing, and while I've put in some things on my own I can say that's probably a good idea because we found all kinds of surprises. I already told you about all the things we found in the overgrown ivy (the baby swing, the garden umbrella, the rotary clothes line), but we also found a nice little bench in the shed that I put together (needs painting, I know). Next to the bench are some as-yet-barren pots of violets and cosmos, but while the cosmos are sprouting like crazy, the violets are still germinating. Next year in Jerusalem, I'm hoping.

Cute little mixed pot of goodies from Jules' granddad that responded to a dose of Miracle Gro.

My little Japanese maple is proudly growing away at the edge of the playhouse, with a new little skirt of lobelia to mask the yucky soil underneath. Yeah, I know they don't go together but I don't care. I love them.

I found this little avocado pit that had sprouted in our compost bin, so I planted it on the other corner of the playhouse and look how cute! If it bears any fruit I'll be amazed, but I like having resurrected it from certain death, and am happy to see it flourishing in our crappy soil.

Remember all those bulbs I accidentally unearthed last winter while I was planting my roses? And how they have been just greenery for most of the spring and I was considering pulling them out? Well guess what, they're about to flower. Crazy. They didn't flower last summer, and the patch I didn't dig up is still just leaves, but these little beauties are about to turn into something. Anybody with information about what species they might be, please write in.

So that's it. There's a little patch of sweet williams that are still germinating, and a couple of on-sale foxgloves I just put in at the back of the rose bed near the nerines which may or may not ever come into flower, but we're coming along. Any design advice or ideas about what we should do with the lawn furniture would be most welcome.