I saw a garden

Context
I was looking at pictures on the internet of people who have replaced their lawns with gardens and found a link to this story of a man who's been cited for having an educational garden instead of a lawn in front of his house because it's considered an eyesore. Wanting to see for myself, I found this picture of the garden in question.

Commentary
Does the garden in the link above look bad to you, like it would diminish property values in the neighborhood? It's OK; you can be honest. It does look a little odd, doesn't it? I mean, there's food growing right out there where everyone can see it!

It seems to me that Americans sometimes have a paradoxical relationship to work. Everyone is supposed to work hard, but when you return to your middle-class home in the suburbs no one is supposed to see the effort you put in. You go to an air-conditioned office in the city for eight hours a day to make enough money to buy food; you don't grow it yourself! It's not just food, either. You're not supposed to work on your car in your yard either, and you're not supposed to hang your clean laundry out to dry.

Pardon the digression, but having been raised in Mexico, that last one was quite a shock to me when I returned to the United States. I mean, line-dried laundry can be a little stiff, but it smells so much better and lasts so much longer than the dryer-processed version. Not to mention how much better it is for the environment.

Which brings me back to the garden, which is also more environmentally sensible than keeping a lawn. And it shouldn't be that difficult. After all, we used to all grow our own food and hang out our own laundry. But I think that's part of the problem. Americans are very fond of progress. We like to feel like we're starting at one point and constantly improving on our way to one goal or another. Going back to something we've already done feels like failure or surrender. In our culture "old-fashioned" and "traditional" are usually meant pejoratively. That's why the words "new" and "improved" so often go together.

Realistically, though, we have to recognize that some progress is not good. Like the constant upward climb of our average weight, which is considerably diminishing our quality of life. Increasingly sophisticated and efficient weaponry is not my favorite form of progress either. Mind you, I'm not advocating that we return to the good old days of beating each other up with rocks. I'm just saying that maybe growing a little food on your property is not a crime. Even if it is a little unusual-looking.

What did you see?