While ya’ll were out parting it up or relaxing in your tent out in the woods, we spent most of Memorial Day weekend working on the yard. (Okay probably some of you were working too.) The weather was lovely and we made good progress. If you read the last blog, the first step was moving the witch hazel. I’m happy to report it is still doing well in its new home. Next we dug out of the bank, carried 61 blocks from Ben’s car to the site, and began to lay and level the first row of blocks. This is the first time we’ve built a retaining wall with blocks and it goes fast! Once the first row is set and level it’s just stacking, not much thinking required. We back-filled with gravel a few inches deep to prevent frost heaving. The rock came from down below on a path we are redoing. I don’t like gravel as a ground cover, it isn’t comfy to walk on with bare feet and it looks messy. It’s handy for back-fill though! So I raked it into piles and scooped it into 5-gallon buckets, then hauled it around back and dumped it behind the wall.
The one snag we hit was dealing with the irrigation line. It needed to be buried deeper and travel under our new wall. Burying it on the slope required me to dig under a sizable root, and we had to pull it up temporarily to rototill the dirt balls into fine dirt. Somehow in all that it ended up with a hole, of course a few inches from where in dives below the retaining wall. Very hard to fix. We decided to cut out the line and re-route it later. Having an irrigation line run under a retaining wall is not a good idea, we were just trying to save time and money because that’s where we originally laid it. Ah well, another day another project.
So we are close! We are debating perhaps buying a bit of sod because planting seed in late spring isn’t ideal, plus I’d have to keep the little bug off it. Or if we slack maybe it will stay dirt for a while and we’ll seed it in the fall. We still have some work to do clearing the grass off the bank and planting, but I think it’s starting to look pretty good! Sam and I had fun last night ‘packing’ the dirt by running around on it with our bare feet. When you live on a hill, any little bit of level is a great open space. Wanna come over and enjoy a drink around our first fire in the backyard with us? 🙂
Holy crap, Jess! That looks GREAT!! You guys really worked hard and it shows… I know how much effort goes into yard work, and how typically little you have to show for it when you’re through. Good job! We (I should say, Robin) worked in the yard all weekend, planting trees. Yes, more trees. And, it actually turned out pretty well. I’ll have to post some pictures… I weeded, in between feedings and fussiness. So, I kinda helped. Anyway, our yard doesn’t look nearly as worked over as yours! Keep it up.. 🙂
Nice work guys! It’s gotta be a lot of work moving dirt – especially on an incline. Makes me think I should work in our yard more… We have horsetails growing through our lawn now. I swear those things are like weeds on crack. Ugh! You’re lawn is growing! 🙂 Looks like Sam is quite the little helper too. 😉