Most people consider their summer vacation to be when they travel and see new places. We spend all our time doing that, and in the summer we stay at our favorite campground right here at home in Washington State ... and we do landscaping projects! LOL! Last year I showed you a retaining wall we built. You can see it HERE to refresh your memory, if you'd like. What you see here is a series of pictures that should give you a pretty good idea of how we've spent our time over the past few months! 1. Bill says getting started is half done, but I think he might be wrong about that in this case! This is the bare-bones-basic outline of the project, looking south. (I forgot to take a shot before we started. Sorry about that. If I had, you would have seen a dirt slope. Isn't that the way they all start?) 2. The stairs are in, and what was originally going to be a wall has turned into a bench. I'm sort of famous around here for design-on-the-fly! I'm sure Bill thinks I woke up every morning with a new idea. This is the view facing north. 3. The stairs are done, the bench is done, and we're working on the area around the tree. This is facing west. 4. This part of the project is done! Stairs, bench, and a path around the tree from the shed to the lower area are all done. That pile of black flexible hose is for a drain line out by the road. It will keep our main lawn from being flooded all winter! 5. The pavers are in around the deck, topsoil is in, and we're ready to plant grass! You can see the top edge of the new wall there along the left-hand side of the photo. This is facing west again. 6. Compare this to image #3. Wow! What a difference! 7. I wanted you to see how great the grass looks already. We could hardly believe how fast it came up! This is looking east. 8. Here's a shot from the road, showing last year's project wall and how it all connects up. The new project is between the shed and the stump. Next year ... a patio!! :) We're having a ball with this. We work when we feel like it, take days off when we don't want to move bricks, and don't worry too much about how long it's taking to get the job done. We started this year's project right after the 4th of July, and put down grass seed on August 18th.