Let’s get this garden started

So it took me five months to get my chairs hung in the carport (aka the carporch), and another year before I finally began to tackle the seemingly untackle-able project of beginning to garden around it. There were three major hurdles to overcome—

1) THE SHED
I knew from the outset that the old 8'x10' shed would have to go. First of all, we didn’t need it — we have a garage for storage. Second, I could fantasize about converting it to a picturesque little writing shed with a garden view all I wanted, but it was taking up a large chunk of the would-be garden. And most importantly, there was no way to create shade and privacy without planting right where the shed was. Meanwhile, the shed was the only tiny bit of separation we had between us and our rear neighbors (at first), so I didn’t want to take it down until I knew what would replace it and was prepared to make it happen.

2) THE GRASS
As noted (and you can see above), there was nothing here but grass running right from the wraparound asphalt driveway to the fence line. There was no way to even think about putting plants in dirt without mulching out or digging up at least a strip of grass along the fence, but then there was:

3) THE FENCE
I had every intention of replacing the chain-link fence with a wooden privacy fence, so it made no sense to dig alongside it and/or put in any plants until that work was done. ...