I can hardly believe it’s been a week since we worked on the landscaping for the back retaining wall. Time flies, but I’m sure glad it’s done!

Last Saturday my Dad came over to the house for the day since my Mom was away on a trip to Sunriver. We didn’t have anything specific planned, but we did have quite a few plants that were starting to melt in the summer heat in their little black plastic pots. We ended up in the backyard, and the retaining wall at the back seemed like the easiest place to make a big difference and get things into the ground.

These are some “before” pictures of the area. It’s an area that needed some weeding, pine needle removal, rototilling, and a lot of love.

Please forgive the large pile of wood and black tarp. We’ve been using the back corner to store extra wood scraps from our projects, so we can use it for fire wood when we finally have our back paver patio and fire pit built.

For Easter this year, my parents got us a mini-rototiller…no chocolate Easter Bunnies for us! ha! Sadly it hadn’t made it out of the box, so my job was to put it together. I’m always the one building things, just give me an instruction manual, a tool kit, and some time. Thankfully this required very little work and we were off to the races!

In addition to weeding and rototilling the back wall, we also decided to put in a plastic liner between the soil and the drain rock directly behind the retaining wall. You can just barely see the boards that we put down to prevent The Renaissance Man from kicking dirt from the rototiller up against the back of the retaining wall.

And this is our mini-rototiller, she deserves a big high-five for her hard work! You can also see the black liner that we used to separate the rock from the soil. The Renaissance Man was our fearless rototiller, and I worked with my Dad to get the liner in place and then shovel in drain rock.

This back corner area got the same treatment after I raked up all of the pine needles. We have a beautiful ornamental pine in our neighbors backyard that we really love, but it also means that we have to rake up pine needles.

My Dad helped us with plan implementation, he sure knows how to make things come together. He cut all of the liner into the right shapes and sizes, and dug in the liner and held it in place while I pour in the gravel.

Even my parent’s dog Cooper, decided to get in on the action. He’s so wiggly I had a hard time just getting a picture!

This is where we ended on Saturday; the soil all tilled up, the liner in place, and gravel up against the back retaining wall. I’m glad we decided to put in the liner, originally I was leaning against it, but both The Renaissance Man and my Dad twisted my arm and I’m glad they did, it looks great!

Come Sunday it was time to plant. All of the plants are native to Oregon, and The Renaissance Man started most of them from seed when we lived in our last apartment in Tigard. So all of the plants are about two years old. The rest of the plants are from a local native plant nursery called Bosky Dell Natives in West Linn, Oregon.

Some of the plants like this Self Heal, I broke apart into several smaller plants. Thankfully Self Heal is very hearty and I can report that even though I broke it into four different plants they’re all doing very well.

By Sunday afternoon everything had made it’s way into the ground!  Even though we rototilled everything, the ground is still really hard because it’s been so dry. I used our post hole digger to dig holes for all of the plants.

Then we gave everything a good watering. Up next we’ll put down some bark dust and watch everything grow!