Ok, so the old pad and the tree are fixed. I'm afraid I don't see the impediment to removing the old flagstone, however. It doesn't look all that firmly concreted it. Once you remove it, or even before you do, clear it from your brain. Don't factor it into your plans any more than you would factor in a piece of old linoleum into plans indoors. You may find that getting out there and starting to remove the yew trunks will help you mentally move past them as well. Your situation of not wanting to do much demolition is going to limit your ability to improve the area, so I would keep your installations very simple, minimal in fact, and easily reversible. The next owners of your home, or possibly you if you stay longer than you think, will eventually want to address the area as a whole, so do them a favour and yourself a favour by not making it too complicated. In addition, whatever you do is not going to be long-lasting in the conditions you have, so don't overwhelm yourself. Skip the planters and defining the area, and don't make a bunch of different areas or types of surface. You just need open space that you can enjoy that is easy to take care of. I would suggest you cover the whole unpaved area with cheap concrete slabs available at your average big box store for quite a reasonable price. Again, watch craigslist too - you never know. Watch the free and garden/materials listings. My preference is for 24x24, or 18x18, because the fewer cracks you have, the easier they are to maintain. However, those sizes are harder to handle and level than, say, 12x12. You don't give your zone, but I don't think you should do a bunch of base installation anyway - I would just put the slabs on the dirt and if you have frost heave, so be it; you can do a bit of relevelling. I say this because between tree roots and the fact that the pad will eventually be demolished by someone, there is no point in building a stellar patio that is going to be changed anyway in not too many years. There's a trick here too: you can cover the pad as well with those slabs, if you design the grade so it is just at the right height. Now, just a tip about "my husband loves the tree and the slab..." We used to have a couple of huge willow trees in the back yard that I wanted to remove. I am the gardener, and they were causing endless backbreaking work for me (long story). My husband rarely goes in the yard but looks at it out the back window all the time. "But I love those trees" he would say, from inside, while I griped about yet another day spent pruning and dealing with their litter and other constraints. It took me a while to wise up, but finally one year I enlisted him to do the pruning (they overhung the garbage area of the lane and that had to be kept clear). The trees were down within 6 months :-) Moral of the story, if he loves them, make them his headache. Why should you be sweeping and worrying about edging the concrete pad if he loves it? Let it get covered with debris and eventually disappear into the soil. He'll figure it out. Karin L

Well, I wandered around my local discount drug/department store and got creative (this was the same store where I found self watering windowboxes). I took pictures, but I haven't finished the roll (Gasp, yes, I'm NOT digital yet!). When they're ready I'll scan and post. I ended up with a little plastic basket, and a piece of snap in gutter screen and foam pipe insulation. I had to shorten the basket, and cut off the top. I also drilled some more holes in the bottom and side (get a drill bit that will work on plastic) to maximize the dirt to water ratio. I I had to trim the gutter screen a little, but it's thin plastic. Shears and a hacksaw did fine. I put the basket in the middle and cut a hole in the screen so that the screen hung over the basket a little. The dirt goes down into the basket. I cut two corners off the screen, and stuck a piece of pipe insulation in each corner. I cut the bottom at an angle so the water would flow out easily into the reservoir part. I propped up the other corners with a short piece of pipe. I tried watering it the other day, and soon had water coming up the sides of my box! I should probably drill a couple of over flow holes just above the gutter screen line. I planted wildflower seedlings and threw in a bunch more seed. I figure I'll thin them later. This box is my 'will wildflowers create a windbreak on my balcony?' experiment. For the Deck box (plastic, bigger than a windowbox), I did not do a bottom screen. I'll use the gutter screen next year. I had not done enough studying yet when I did this one. I used BIG chunks of styrofoam torn up and jumbled with lots of air spaces inbetween. Again I put the angle cut pipe in two corners. I covered the top with a black garbage bag. This contains bush beans, and I think I've had to water it once in 2 months? It is still inside, in front of my 8' patio door. I've had beans! The neighbors couldn't believe it. MY WORD, those things are tasty! I've just planted new seeds inbetween the current plants. These plants are pretty leggy from being indoors, and once the new ones come up I'll probably pull these out, and maybe keep rotating like that all summer. I plan to move it out to the balcony in a week or two, and I hope they'll be sturdier when grown outside. I know beans like some heat, so I may need to wait til mid-June at this rate! I don't know how safe the pipe insulation is, but I didn't see anything else to use (looked all around HD too) without getting into buying a big, expensive, roll of something. If anyone has any suggestions on what to use for tubing, let me know. Maybe some medical supply item? I heard PVC pipe isn't very safe either, and I wasn't sure I had the tools to trim it. I don't have much storage. I need all my pots and supplies to stack within each other and hide under my balcony table/chair set in the winter. That all gets covered with multiple vinyl chair covers, and strapped down with bungee cords so it doesn't all blow away in the gale force winter winds. Anyway, it was fun to wander around the store and think creatively! Tyrus urban, where did you find Earthboxes for $27? I have a different brand which I think was $30ish on sale at QVC. I put my tomatoes in there a week ago, and of course the temp dropped immediately. It's too heavy to pull inside, so I've had a white poly fabric shower curtain clamped aroung my home made trellis system ever since. Light goes in, rain rolls off. I check them every day and they are surviving. I plan on planting the garden this weekend, but I'll be rigging some cover around the tomatoes and cukes. I may just put a paper leaf bag over the cages at night. If the leaves end up laying against plastic they get frosted. I think I'll put down some black trash bags for a day or two to try to heat up the soil some more.

I'm apologize in advance for my very looooong response. :-) We purchased 25.67 acres in June 2009, and didn't start our home until April 2010. We had almost a year of time to plan, prep the land and get permits and permissions in order. In hindsight, another year would have been great. Take advantage of the time you have to judge things like rainfall, groundwater, floodplain if you're near water, etc. This will help you determine ideal location of home, depth of foundation, etc. It will also let you see where windows would take advantage of sunrises/sunsets; where winds and snow are coming through the trees, etc. so you can make house plans for that specific location, or plant trees now as a windbreak or snow fence. One of the first things we did, was get permission IN WRITING from township regarding building permit, roadway permit, fencing, etc. We also contacted the Conservation Authority. Much of property is considered significant woodlot, as well as being protected due to bordering cold water creek with abundant wildlife. (You mentioned being near/adjacent to National Forest, so this may apply to your situation.) We also asked the Conservation Authority for WRITTEN PERMISSION on what we could do with the land, where we could build a home, etc. We were so fortunate that our Conservation Authority suggested applying for grants for reforestation. Although over 20 acres is already forested, they planted over 4000 trees, with at least 3000 being norway spruce. Since we began with the grants only weeks after buying the land in 2009, we had a year to work with the forester to determine which trees the deer or rabbits loved and which they avoided. Now, we have over a year of growth and they are coming back to help us apply for more grants to continue planting. WE DIDN'T PAY FOR ANY TREES OR PLANTING. Well worth the time to research any grants available to landowners! We began clearing trees at the building site ourselves. (my husband has at CAT backhoe, so this saved us lots) The first major thing we did in 2009 was put in a well. If you can't get good water, building may not be possible. As 'brickeyee' suggested, we also hired an engineer in 2009 to do our site plan, which included test pits for perc. He was able to do two pits in two different seasons. This allowed us to see where the groundwater was during spring and fall, which helped us determine the foundation depth. We also knew the type of septic system required, which allowed us to get quotes and set a budget for our future septic system. We started to build relationships with the utility people. This paid off. My husband was allowed to do the trenching - which saved us thousands of dollars. I have to stop typing now. Good luck. Sounds exciting!

OK, Raeanne--I hope you've got your comfortable shoes on, aaannnndddd away we go!!! :) Dance for me my friend--you don't know just how light I feel! NHSuzanne--yep--the old boot--and this is the happiest I've been in a looong time. BJ--yep--a draftin' we do go--and a letter to that couple that I met at the BBQ, too! :) Well, it was an interesting morning, to say the least. I got called into boss's office, and I just knew. She lit into me about something that she told me to do, I did it, and went 20+ steps farther (with her knowledge and permission), and then after she could find the time in her buzy life to review it, she found that she told me wrong. (Now, I am the very first to own up to screwing things up. The very first. And yes, I won't lie and say that I didn't make a mistake--and a stupid one at that. However, the crux of the massive problem was caused by her telling me wrong. I, thank heavens, took detailed notes during our meeting when she told me wrong, and when I pointed it out to her, she siad that I must have misunderstood. Maybe I did--I'll never know.) So, anyway, she started on this isn't working out, blah, blah, blah... (7 years working for her, and all of a sudden, things aren't working out? Well, then.) So, she tell me to get me things together and to be out by 1pm. Not a problem, so I'm in my office, and I'm shuting down my computer, and the male owner/boss walks in, and tells me how sorry he is that things didn't work out (there's *that* again), and that if he can ever do anything for me, please let him know. So, I thank him, and told him that I had enjoyed my time (yes, I know-- a liar and a hypocrite; I just didn't want to leave on a horrible note--I've got more class than that), and then he asks what I'm doing. I told him I was shutting down my programs on the PC, and shutting the PC down. He started saying something about incrimnating evidence of me on the 'net (WTF is that??) And then he tells me to stop, and I said that I couldn't--I had already clicked the button to shut down (and I had). He then gets beligerent, and yells at me to get away from the computer, and then grabs my hand that I had on the mouse (which *I* bought), and yanks the mouse towards him. I'm looking at him like he's nuts, and asked him if he really thought I would be so low to do anything to the PC. (Now, a lot can be said about me, but I would never, in a million years, ever do anything like that deliberately.) He growled that he wanted me out of there as soon as possible, and I looked that short, arrogent, @sshole-in-sheep's clothing SOB in the eye and told him that not any faster than I wanted out of there. So, i finish packing up my cr@p (and gawd... did i have it), and my 2 girlfriends walked out with me. I am going to miss them. So, I'm worried what Rog will think, although, he was the first I had called as soon as I got back to my office. I went to the unemployement place (which I will bet you that they will fight me on), and they are closed. So, I go home, and Rog is fine with it. Thanks heavens--I hate to put all of this on him. Oh, and in retrospect, I think I partially know what happened. The old place where we all came from is shutting down, and my boss told me last week that she had already gotten 7 or 8 resumes. I'll lay odds that she wants to hire one of her buddies from there. And this happened before to one of our account executives that was a brillient CPA. A bud of the male owner became available, and he fired our CPA to make room for this chick. (I do know that's what happened, because my boss told me (the VP and an acct exe.) So--I am leaving for a Saturday in Memphis with Rog, and yes, we are still going to Canada next week. The trip is paid for, and I'm going to enjoy every d@mned minute of it!!! Thanks for always listening, and always being there--you guys are great!!!! :):) And...... all things for a reason! Hugs, from a deliriously happy Maddie