madbaker | Home Improvement, part II

Last year we started a project to fix our back yard. The top of our yard is taller than the top of our house; some of the hill is terraced. We have used it occasionally for growing tomatoes, but realistically none of the four of us put in enough effort to grow anything regularly.

Anyway, the retaining wall was rotting out and we realized it needed to be replaced with something more sturdy, or the entire hillside might flood our back doors. At that point, we talked about making the space more usable: taking one of the beds out and flattening it, putting in a trellis and cold water sink (the water line is already there), etc. The HOA account would have been nearly drained if we'd done it all in one go so we compromised on splitting it in two years.

(It turned out the rotting wood wasn't in as bad shape as we'd feared; when they poured the new concrete last year, they had to jackhammer out bedrock to dig it down. So for the last year we've had a blank modernist retaining wall.)

Yesterday the workers came in and flattened out the area. It looks really good. Now for the pavers, trellis, and applying the tile to the wall. The neighbors picked up a tile during their trip to Spain reading "Hostel de Laurel", which seems appropriate to set in there...