The Tangrens

Noah loved the digger.

He was all about sitting on it. As soon as I got him up on it he just took to the gears like a natural. No wonder he loved to watch the guys work...he was studying.

I felt so responsible for the digger when it was here. When rain storms came....and they came REGULARLY during the project...I wrapped it up.

I unwrapped it one morning and found that a cat had sought refuge from the weather in my wrapped up digger for the night.

The next day Matt was here the rest of the trench was dug to depth and then he went after the concrete. It was amazing to watch. At first I didn't realize what was happening. I was feeding Noah and saw the back hoe lifting off the ground out of the corner of my eye. He was lifting the corner of the concrete and the whole section lifted off the ground then when he dropped it, it broke. I couldn't stop watching it. It was amazing. I got way too many videos of it.

The next day when they came to haul off the pieces of concrete Noah could not be contained. He had to be out there with them.

They even let him help them. He was beyond thrilled.

Then we waited for the rock to arrive. And the rain and wind to pass.

One consideration in our landscape plan was the pear tree. I wanted the retaining wall around 4 to 5 feet from the fence line and the pear tree was around 7 feet from the fence line. I knew we'd probably have to move either it or the wall. When I went out to prune it this year I noticed this

and this

and knew if we did keep it the tree would have to be much shorter down the road at best. After weeks of vacillating we decided to reluctantly get a new tree and forgo two years of harvest. I told Matt that he could take it to his house and plant it if he wanted...I like to think that's what he did. ( Just a side note: only stake your trees if you have to and only for a year max when you do...thank you)

On April 21st the rock arrived.

The next day they got to work on the footings, leveling again and again. This little machine made sure that our wall and yard was level. Can't tell you how many times they checked it...countless.

So after all the leveling and the gravel and sand and more leveling they ran a level line and started laying the rock and leveled a bit more and put more rock down.

Then they started to level the ground in front of the wall and we started to see what a level backyard looks like.

Do you see the rainbow? It was just for us you know. :)

It was crazy how different the wall made our backyard look, more defined. It strangely looked bigger too.

The next time Matt came he brought PVC pipe.

He thought that there'd be a connection to the water from the back for the sprinklers but found there wasn't. He had to run a line from the main, which meant digging up a little grass.

So getting to actually laying the pipe took longer than he expected.

As he was digging trenches and laying pipe he asked me what we had planned for the flower bed area and if I wanted to have sprinklers hit that area or run a drip line of some kind. Hadn't even thought of that. He also asked me if we wanted to move the linden tree we had near the center of the back yard and suggested moving it to the opposite end of the yard. Another thing I hadn't even considered. It was amazing to me how fast and easy he moved trees around. It hadn't even occurred to me to move the tree because I thought it would be very difficult if not impossible. As it turned out the tree looks so much better in it's current location It was in the process of leafing out and it didn't skip a beat. You'd never know it had been moved.

The next day they came was a whirlwind. The sprinklers were finished and the cement was poured

then we waited for the sod to come. And come it did.

It wasn't all for us...I think we only took two or three pallets.

After that was four guys laying down sod faster than I'd ever seen it laid.

We laid probably 200 sq feet of sod in our front yard last year and it took us...ALL DAY practically. These guys laid more than 2000 sq feet in a matter of an hour or two. It looked AMAZING! After adjusting the sprinklers and moving our sprinkler control ( which we had to run an extension cord to in order to run it previously) they were off leaving us with a beautiful backyard.

I tried to take a video after every phase. Here's the rapid fire progress and the final result.