Promoting literacy, but not in our neighborhood

TPP's walk to work takes one of three paths, all quite pleasant, two of which are green boulevard malls. It's good to switch things around, but generally, the eastern most street is taken to campus and the western most street taken home. The middle street, one where the Phactors lived for 22 years is seldom walked now for no good reason. At any rate, on the way to campus TPP walks past one yard where what looks like a doll house sits on a pole. It is a little free library; take a book, bring back a book. This has always struck TPP as a fine gesture, a really nice, simple thing to do to make the world a slightly better place. However it turns out that not everyone has neighbors as nice as ours, or neighborhoods as nice as ours; in some places neighbors complained about these little libraries and dopey city officials citing ordinances stored away for decades just for such purposes deal with squeaky wheels by giving in to their curmudgeonly complaints and asking for the removal of these book exchanges. This makes TPP want to put up a little library along with a Thai spirit house (not an endorsement), especially if little floral leis were easy to come by as they are in Bangkok. How about that neighbors? Freedom of speech right beside freedom of religion.

Landscaping quiz

Scenario: You buy an attractive, classic home in a well-established, historical neighborhood and after you move in you decide the landscaping needs some fixing. In order to endear yourself to the neighborhood do you
1. Prune the over grown, renew some perennial beds, and replace a few too-far-gone shrubs.
2. Hire professionals to come in redesign the whole thing starting afresh with boxwoods everywhere.
3. Decide to get a cold dring, sit and study the whole problem for a year or two because you don't want to be precipitous.
4. Have a knowledgeable person make suggestions about what to do and where to begin, then start on a gradual process of renewal of the landscaping.
5. Announce a disinclination to landscape, rip out all the shrubs, foundation plantings, perennial beds, and any tree not on the property line and plant grass.

Please attempt to justify your answer so as to mollify your neighbors. This may turn out to be more of the psychological study than a gardening quiz.