When we moved into our house, our back yard looked like a scene from The Sandlot. All that the city of Seattle required to get the occupancy permit, was for a loader to lay down some compost on top of our sandy soil (to increase water retention and decrease run off), and to scatter some grass seed. They did both on the hottest, driest week of the year (the first week of July), and then we moved in immediately after.
I didn't even bother to try and water back there to get the grass seed growing, for a solid month. The weather was so hot (in the 90's and 100's) that any water that did get sprayed, immediately evaporated. Once August rolled around, we had a few cooler spells and I tried to water the grass seed, but it mostly refused to grow. I think a lot of the seed got damaged and the ground still just never stayed wet enough consistently. Finally by the end of September the grass was fully in, just in time for the cold, wet fall to arrive. So it was basically a dirty, flat lot out there for some time. But I had a vision.
When they originally graded the back yard, they graded it flat right off the back doors of the house, and then it stepped up about 3 feet to the rest of the back yard, like a mini terrace. My dream was to create a nice, paver patio right off the back doors, and hold the slope back with a retaining wall. I could just envision setting the kid's pool on the patio, and eating dinner out there in the summer. I also want to add a shrub border around the entire backyard, filled with colorful shrubs, edible plants and fruit trees. So far we have built the border and I have just started planting a few flowering shrubs.
The back part of the house and the entire back yard is south facing and fairly exposed, so we get a lot of sun in the summer months. We really needed some alternate outdoor living area aside from just a sea of grass. I also wanted to build some garden beds on top of the retaining wall, to both take advantage of all of the sun, but also make gardening pretty convenient from the house. I imagine walking out onto the patio, a few feet from the back door, and picking lettuce, herbs and tomatoes. Finally in November, once we got the business of moving done and out of the way, Michael starting making my vision a reality.
As of this writing, Michael has built two of the garden beds, has hand-excavated the soil for the patio, built the retaining wall and laid down gravel as the base of the patio. I have helped a little bit, but the kids are not super interested in watching mommy and daddy dig for hours, so I mostly have been watching them while Michael works on it in his spare time. He has done all of that in about two months. Its incredible! We started laying the pavers today, in a 90 degree herringbone pattern. Its fun watching the final steps start to happen and makes my vision all the more clear in my mind. Now I am starting to plan which plants I want to buy and am dreaming up a planting schematic in my mind. I can't wait to see it all done! The back yard is FAR from complete, but once this particular project is finished, it will look a lot better and will certainly feel like a lot more useful space for our family.
As an interesting side note, as we were excavating the ground for the patio, we cam across a buried structure. Further inspection revealed a 5 foot deep, 3 foot wide, cement hole, filled with water. Additionally, there are two big water pipes, one for incoming water and one for outgoing water. The only thing we can think of it that its for drainage of ground water, to prevent localized flooding around the foundation. Either way the thing is super odd. The main bad part about it, is that the metal top sits at the level we want to place our pavers at, so we are going to have to come up with some way to cover up the hole, without compromising its water holding capacity. Its a conundrum so far and an impediment to our progress. Michael keep going around, telling everyone that we have the world's smallest underground bomb shelter. Haha!
***Update***
We asked our builder about the water collection tank and it turns out that he actually installed it. For whatever reason it was not included on any of the plans so we didn't know about it. He told us that he might be able to source a different lid for us, one that is more low-profile and won't interfere with laying the pavers.
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