When I bought the house there were some issues in the back yard with retaining walls. I patched up the one on the south and handled the southwest corner with the raised retaining wall bed that I built last year. The wildflowers I planted in it last year were a lot of fun, except when they fell over. This years I’m going in a more meditated direction, so it is still a work in progress.

Fixtures are doing fine but I need to move some things around that came up from seed and then fill the holes.

My friend Bob gave me a redwood sapling that he got in California last year. Happy that it is hanging in there!

I told mom I wanted ferns. I do but not really for this bed. May be a temp home or maybe not — I like and they like it there!

But back to my wall woes. North of the retaining wall bed there is a section of old wall that fell down. I decided that it would be fun to build some steps and pillars to the back area along the fence. The first part of the project happened when the old fence fell down. I took some of the old board and cardboard and covered the weeds along the fence.

This has been covered since early March — 2 months isn’t really long enough to kill some things but it was a good start. Black pots hold honeysuckle that have been very patient and getting a real home.

Weeds on their way to dead, I need to deal with the horrible yucca. As a rule, I don’t like plants the hurt me (hence my dislike of roses.) But digging these out proved more of a challenge than expected! Huge roots masses — I guess that is how they live in the desert — store up as much moisture as they can in their big fleshy roots.

The shovel that I inherited from Grandpa Doman (so it is at least 15 years old) met its match against the yucca. One more reason to dislike yucca

Yucca out (or so I thought — I kept running into big chunks that I thought were concrete but were just more roots), time to get building. I knew that I would have some challenges since I was building on a not super level old retaining wall stones. But I figured it would be fine.

Ready to rock and roll. Guy loading the cinderblocks for me was worried that my truck wasn’t up to the task. I laughed!

It was just like my job — just make all of the blocks fit.

Steps and pillars done. Weed clothe and mulch laid. pots planted with honeysuckle, snap dragons and verbena. Green pots to blend in with neighbors weeds.

There are some gaps and both pillar lean toward the front. I may pull some it apart and see if I can fix it but things should settle a little bit. I do want to get some urn-type pots for on top of the pillars but Lowe’s didn’t have any I liked that I was willing to splurge on. All and all I’m pleased and definitely better than it was.