Retaining Wall Project
When we purchased our house the back fence kept falling over every time the wind blew and had to be propped up with a 4X4. Finally we decided to just take down the back fence altogether and leave the back open. Since a creek flows behind our house, we got to see more wildlife -- racoons, opossums, feral cats all commonly pass through our back yard. On rainy days, when the creek has water in it, we also see an occasional Kingfisher perched on a fence post or wire above the creek and can watch egrets fishing.

The back yard used to be pretty small. When they concreted the creek bed, they moved the utility poles to the other side of the creek and abandoned an existing easement behind our fence. Taking out the fence gave us about another four feet of depth to the yard. Also, the yard had sloped very gradually from the old fence line to about three foot from the patio.

We hired a guy with a bobcat to come and remove some of the soil (about 3 dump-truck-loads worth) and take it to the dump. The whole project was complicated by the fact that this was a year with a LOT of late spring rain. The project kept having to be pushed back because of the soil conditions. Finally, we just DID it, even though moving around the adobe soil at that point really was a bad idea (clay tends to cling together when wet). Further complicating the issue was that roots from our and our neighbor's trees really encroached into the yard. We kept two higher areas at either ends for the tree roots, but got rid of what we could from the middle sections of the yard.

Finally we built a retaining wall, trenched and put in an irrigation system, sodded, and planted a lot of trees, bushes and vines, and voila! (I was taking landscaping classes from Foothill College and decided to plant one of everything I liked, not an especially ATTRACTIVE way to landscape, but I learned a lot about different kinds of plants).

<== The backyard after fence removal and after dirt removal. It rained again at this stage, causing the back yard to be a muddy mess. Note plants waiting to get planted. Some of these were planted in the front yard, since the bobcat had to go into the yard through the side yard and therefore we had to wait to plant the front until the back-yard dirt removal was completed.

Backyard after sodding. Retaining wall later got the addition of a seating 'top'. We left the dying purple plum alone (in front of the retaining wall). The retaining wall was built to protect the neighbor's pine tree roots. ==>
<== This is one of the areas that we had to build up because of the roots of our Brazilian Pepper Tree. Pink Flamingos were a gift from a friend.

Complete! Enjoying the retaining wall with a couple of bicycling buddies. ==>