Garden tour, harvest and planting continue

I went to the Wildflower Center garden tour this weekend, visiting three houses. I realized that I'm starting to develop some strong opinions about garden design and that the only things holding me back from becoming the next Capability Brown are time and money. Also, training and skill and experience. All of these things accepted as given, I still wouldn't trade the three professionally designed and installed gardens for my own. There are some design ideas I will copy - a concrete water trough fountain, a limestone walled court yard that is covered by fig ivy. There are some plants I hadn't seen in real life and will try to use - heart leaf skullcap, oakleaf hydrangea. I would trade the location of the last garden we visited for mine on certain Saturday afternoons, it being within walking distance of The Draught House Pub.
Seeing the court yard reminded me how badly I want to build one of my own. A secluded walled garden with a pea gravel floor, vine covered walls, plants protected from frost and deer, a fireplace, a fountain and a dining table. If you don't like the idea of that, I refuse to help you. I cannot figure out where I will put it, how it will relate to the house, how large I want it. These issues are not that pressing, as I can also not figure out how I will pay for it.
Another idea I saw represented in the gardens on tour was that of mixing vegetables in with perennials or setting aside vegetable space among ornamental gardens. This is an idea that I really like. As I've written previously, I will mix my onions and garlic into my perennial beds from this point on. They are green when other plants are not, they bloom (some of them - I have no idea what makes one onion bloom and the next, not) and then you eat them. If I didn't have deer, I don't think I would bother with a dedicated vegetable garden. I think most of the vegetables I've grown have ornamental value. If you are reading this (anyone?) and are wishing you had a vegetable garden - you do, you oblivious near-do-well! Mix in some swiss chard and cucumber. It will look good, make good use of space and best of all - you'll be really hip. Edible landscapes are all the rage with the bourgeois garden crowd right now. Never pass up an opportunity to do something good, the satisfying feeling you get judging others afterward is hard to replicate.
While we are on the subject of satisfying feelings, I harvested my first handful of Kew peas. Take that, Dripping Springs / London climate disparities. The plants have been healthy and started blooming small white flowers about two weeks ago. While willing my tomatoes to grow, I noticed that they had in fact made peas. This led me to a sad realization. I need a bigger garden. 78 square feet of garden space is not much. I only planted one square foot (I'm sort of using the square foot gardening principle without actually reading the book) of peas and if they keep producing at the current rate, I will never actually make it back to the house without eating my entire harvest of peas first. I eat a lot of sugar snap peas and I'm blown away thinking of how many plants must be involved in the production of my monthly pea dosage. And yes, I might want to actually buy and read "Square Foot Gardening" before claiming it doesn't work and building a bigger garden.
I harvested about 3/4 of my potato, onion and garlic crop, leaving the rest in the ground for an extra 10 days or so, just to see if I jumped the gun with my first harvest. I didn't actually notice a huge difference in the yield between the barrel potatoes and the bed potatoes, ruining my barrel is better hypothesis. The bed potatoes did sprawl everywhere, overrunning onions and courgettes ("get you're common hybrid leaves off my Kew Courgette!" he yelled as the potato lay idly in his bed, unfazed), so I'm sticking with barrels next year anyway. White onions beat red onions 12-3 in the bulb size competition, taste test results are still pending.
Okra, acorn squash and pinkeye purple hull peas are in. I looked for sweet potato slips at a local garden center today, finding none but blank stares. I'll try again tomorrow with more reputable retailers.