The Intent of the Gardener - GGW Picture This Photo

The theme for this month's Picture This Photo Contest is "The Intent of the Gardener", something I've pondered ever since we moved to this small plot of land in July ... Rich Pomerantz, the judge for the contest, advises us to look for the unifying principle of the design and also "Look to see if the designer took her cues from the land".
Are there many cues when you buy a 25-year old house on a boring, irregularly-shaped lot in a subdivision? Bulldozers shaped the land, men built the houses and privacy fences carved it into wedges, trapezoids and rectangles. There is, however, a slight rise toward the center back of the lot, which we tried to enhance.
I know exactly what the unifying principle is in this garden... it's the same principle that 'unified' every one of our gardens, although it may only be obvious to Philo and me. Underlying everything is our wish to Not Be Bored. This does lead to a rather messy looking garden - the back yard went from blank to busy in one day after our kids helped us bring all the portable landscape items from the previous Austin house - more than 100 containers full of trees, shrubs, vines, a metal arch, hypertufa troughs, the birdbath from Illinois, wooden benches and patio furniture. Our intent was to have somewhere to go, something to do, someplace to be - and with luck - something to eat. So far so good. I tried to get the yard from the same angle as in the Before photo above. Click this After photo and it should enlarge.
This smaller version is my entry for the contest. The rules say the photo should be under 500 pixels on the long side and when uploaded this was 495 x 359 pixels. What happens now is up to Blogger.
Edit 10 PM - website says size rule no longer in effect.
GardeningGoneWild has a photo gallery for the contest, where you can view the more elegant entries.