Hello Everyone,

I've shared with you pictures of our retaining walls we put in last summer, and I wanted to show you what we've done so far this year. DD announced her engagement in January, with intentions to be married in our yard (which looked like crap!), in a gazebo (which we did not have!) on September 10th.


This photo was taken in August of last year, and the lower part of the yard still looked like this up to April of this year. When we had our retaining wall built out front, we had the contractor dump the extra dirt right in the middle of our back yard. We intended to build a large patio, 20 foot in diameter, in a space that was virtually useless to us because of the slope and the inability to grow grass there (too shady).

As soon as the weather permitted, we started hauling away wheelbarrow loads of dirt to different areas of the yard, all of which need retention in some way. We have several large sassafrass trees, and this mound contained root pieces, which started to sprout, so we called this Sassafrass Mountain. Here it is almost gone:

The bottom side of the patio had to have steps, which had to be put in before the walls could go up. You can see our new gazebo, which because we are not TOTALLY insane, we decided to purchase, rather than build ourselves!

First step in:

Steps done:

Future son-in-law (shown here) worked on one side of the wall while DH worked on the other. When they were done, the levels were within 1/16th of an inch of each other--pretty good, huh?

Here is where we were on July 6th, just 2 1/2 weeks before we were scheduled to hold a bridal shower on the patio for DD:

A friend from church loaned us his excavator, AFTER we had hauled 99.9% of the dirt by hand! Here is DH, basically playing on it, finishing up the leveling.

The same guy also loaned us his plate compactor, which we used quite a bit, until the starting cord came out (it's in the shop now)--this is a rental:

Because of the sheer size of the patio, we thought if we broke up the space a bit with a medallion, it would make it look a bit smaller. This is the beginning of a 9 1/2' circle in the middle. Turns out, this decision added hours of work and several more pavers to our project because of the intricate cutting around the circle, both inside and outside.

The place we bought the medallion kit from sent us extra block, enough to make a mini medallion in the upper section. It would have been SO cool; however, we were just running out of time--so the idea was nixed and we'll use the mini-medallion somewhere else. This picture was taken probably less than a week before the scheduled shower.

We finished the patio pavers and cap block at 9 pm on Friday before the shower on Saturday, July 23rd, and were up at 5 am the next morning, planting stuff in the remaining tree ring before guests arrived at 10 am. We thought we could get the gate up on the fence before then, but that just didn't happen, either!

Here is our finished patio. We still have to finish the brick pathways and landscape around the patio. This year, we will just mulch the area to the right of the patio, because we need the space for seating. But next year that area will be another hosta garden!

I will take some updated pictures of our retaining wall gardens, since I left you hanging with bare construction. I believe I have close to 50 new hostas in those beds, all doing well.

Thanks for looking!

Karen