2023 Friday — Backyard High

For this photo I am standing on the top level of our backyard looking down toward the back of our house. If I am counting correctly that’s 5 levels down, but I’m certain that all the levels cannot be seen in this photo.

One year ago right now, this backyard was nothing more than a scruffy hill covered in scrub brush (a polite name for weeds). We knew we wanted to do something with this backyard, but what to do was the question. It was our 10th summer of owning this place. Mr. Fun knew he did not want any stairs, no steps whatsoever. Every builder (contractor) we talked to about getting us an estimate just stood scratching his head looking at the backyard in bewilderment. It was not reassuring. One contractor finally suggested we talk to a welder to have a ramp built. So that’s what we did.

Two separate individual welders came to our place to look and to offer an estimate. The first one, Scott, seemed bewildered, but also wanted the job. The next welder, Cody, scratched his head, certainly a little perplexed, and said, “I can do this!” Cody’s bid actually came in higher than Scott, the first welder, but Cody’s confidence is what won us.

So in middle to late July 2022 our backyard transformation started. The Cody the welder built us a ramp that would take us about halfway up the hill to kind of a natural landing where the land started a gradual climb going the opposite direction of Cody’s ramp. So Cody’s ramp extends almost the entire width of the yard. When he completed the job in early August, we had a nice ramp, but a whole bunch of raw dirt that still needed to be dealt with and bunnies freely wandering the neighborhood and wandering our backyard digging in the dirt.

Scott, the original first welder, mentioned a man named Mercado who could “probably do the entire backyard by himself, with his crew.” But Scott the welder said it so nonchalantly back in the month of May that we paid little attention. So we sat here in August staring at our finished ramp wondering what to do, when I asked Mr. Fun, “Won’t you please call that Mercado guy that Scott mentioned to ask him to build the upper path to the top. Mr. Fun made that phone call.

Mercado arrived that day, took a look at our backyard and asked, “When do you want me to start?” Our response was “When can you start?” Two days later on September 1 the building supplies starting arriving and Mercado had a team of men here to unload the pallets and pallets and pallets of Allen block which became the retaining walls. Mercado’s team worked for 6 weeks from 7:00 in the morning till sundown 6 days a week and often a few hours on Sunday. Six weeks later we had a backyard full of retaining walls with a future flowerbed at the top of each one.

Now we water, watch, and wait as the backyard becomes a place of living foliage.

Today Mr. Fun arrived from SoCal and the two of us and the two pups walked to the top patio to look down on the plants: Draping Rosemary, Yarrow, California poppies, a few pansies, and some petite daisies that are neon purple that our daughter brought us.

Twelve months has brought quite a change.

Good night from
California’s Central Coast,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too

P.S. if you scroll back in my pages to June 8th, the backyard can be seen from a year ago and also from currently at the bottom level looking up. Photographing the yard is quite impossible. I hope some of the photos make sense.