As you can see, some fairly major smoothing was in order before the grass went in. Earlier in the week the landscaper used a small backhoe to pull out a huge rock by the driveway and made us a nice smooth ramp so we could get the lawnmower to the grass in the back yard, (and so you wouldn't need belaying equipment to reach it yourself.) I had to get out there in a hurry when I noticed him going after a second "boulder"--which was, in actuality, the back half of our ledge. I figured I'd better stop him before it destroyed his backhoe the way it's attempted to destroy everything else.

Craig and I also spent several hours earlier in the week picking up the larger rocks and piling them up for later use on top of the boulders in the retaining wall.

I've used a number of these to make a raised garden bed in which to plant flowering shrubs. As you can see, I have plenty left. I'll be building stone walls till I DIE. In a few weeks when it's warmer, I'll add smaller annuals and perennials to fill out the garden a bit.

We haven't left the front yard out entirely, although it's not going to have much done this season. We treated it to this ornamental tree. The tree won't get much taller, but it will fill out into a lovely weeping shape that flowers in the springtime with pretty white blossoms. It smells wonderful, so I think it will be a nice addition. The hole you see next to it is about half the size that I eventually had to dig out. The tree needed a nice soil bed, so I removed several more rocks and a lot of sand, then filled it in with loam, compost and mulch. Hopefully it will do well here.