A Backyard We Can Enjoy!

I really liked having a backyard consisting of mounds of dirt for a little while. The relationship turned sour, however, the moment Matthew and Jonathan began to partake of said dirt as a delicacy. Because we are frugally-minded, or, to put it more bluntly, cheap, we really wanted to landscape the backyard ourselves. To help us generate some ideas, though, we had a few companies come out and give us estimates, which, by the way, are FREE! I was astounded at the price tag on a backyard the size of a postage stamp: $20,000! Seriously??? That was all the gusto we needed to plunge head-first into the do-it-yourself-landscaping-project! Now that the backyard project is completed, I kind of understand why they wanted to charge so much. This project was so much more involved than I ever imagined it to be: 9 cubic yards of road base, 2 cubic yards of sand, 6 cubic yards of top soil, 120 retaining wall blocks, 650 square feet of pavers.  That's a lot of manual labor with only one wheelbarrow and two shovels.  We went through five pairs of work gloves combined and three cases of gatorade.  David made new friends at Home Depot's tool rental shop and the local dump (we hauled out FIVE loads of dirt from the backyard).

I am so thankful for my renaissance of a man husband, David.  He worked so hard designing the yard, researching how to build retaining walls and lay pavers, and executing the plan, which, you can see from the pictures below, required a LOT of manual labor and painstaking attention to detail.  In addition to one week of vacation, he dedicated mornings, evenings, and weekends to this project.  The backyard turned out beautifully because of him.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.  Colossians 3:23

This is a picture of the pavers and retaining wall blocks.

A big pile of road base.

Sand and topsoil.

This is a picture of the retaining wall on the left side of the patio.  We are using each of these beds for vegetables.

This is a picture of the retaining wall in the middle of the patio.

This is a picture of the retaining wall on the right side of the patio.

This is a picture of one the in-ground planters between the retaining walls.  Somehow, I forgot to take a picture of the other one.  We opted to purchase all of the plants from a local nursery that only sells plants native to this region of California.

This is a picture of the in-ground planter and pavers next to the house and opposite the retaining walls.

David laid pavers all along the side of the house and planted citrus trees next to the wall.

This is the other side of the house where we planted grapes and lemonade berry.