Done with Annual Gardens (perennial food forest from here on out) 

OOPS! Left my "pixel punky" character voice filter on!! Sorry about that. :D Enjoy the weird disconnect of my real face with a fake voice. :S

This is my plan right from the beginning at our new place. I'm just doing fruit trees, berries, perennial flowers and native plants. I have a couple of annual flowers planted, but they struggled since I haven't got my drip irrigation system installed yet.

you are a clever Woman, and you are looking well.

What happened to your chickens? Did you give up on them too?

Perennials are definitely a boon to have. Have you looked at landrace gardening for the annuals? It can be a lot less work when things are hyper adapted to local conditions. I literally just broadcasted a bunch of random seeds on a bare spot, and that is the entirety of my effort for my fall garden. 😂

A great deal of agriculture and gardening is about control. I have also tried to limit my control. Perennials are good was to limit control. That is, let the plants "be". Or as you said, some annual plants like squash can be simply left to run wild. And they can actually do better that way if you have the space. I have even grown tomatoes grown wild on the ground at times and they actually do very well if I lay down a good straw layer for them to grow on off the soil. They tend to get more slugs, but there is the work ratio versus slug loss to consider. And given all things it may be about equal for me. So many way to experiment with "off hand" gardening methods. Hope this helps.

a babbling brook can be meditative :) shame you did not at least share a picture of this plant before hacking it back :) never heard of a white black berry before will have to look it up :D