Retaining Wall Steps

We have been working on the back retaining wall over the last couple of weeks. One of the last items is to add the treads to all of the steps. The first step was to cut all of the pieces to fit. Each tread is not exactly the width of two pieces. A string was placed between the top and bottom tread to align the outside edge and figure out how much to cut off each tread. On each step a bed of mortar was spread and the tread was placed and leveled.

Here is a view of the finished step treads.

A view from the back of the house.

A view through the kitchen windows. At some point this will no longer look like a construction site!

Back Garden Bed

The space between the garage an house is slowly getting filled in with pavers and a shade garden bed. After cutting the pavers to the curve of the bed we were planning on putting a sailor course of pavers to edge the bed but we decided to just use the paver edge. We can replace it if the bed does not fill in as intended. Here you can see the cut pavers and the edger strip in place.

Once the edger was in, soil was filled in, plants were planted and mulch was placed over everything.

Here is a picture from the yard looking back. You can see that the hose coil is on the wall in the middle of the bed. We did leave a space and plan to get a couple stepping stones for access over the bed.

Garden Flowers

During a windstorm last week the large foxglove in the front of the house fell over. Here is a picture of Kristen with the plant. It topped out at about 9 feet!

Here are some pictures of the rest of the flowers that are in bloom around the gardens in front of the house.

Happy 4th!

 July 4th is always the first day of summer in the Seattle area. We had our first weather above 60 degrees and it was sunny all day long.

 We took Sam to see his first parade. He did well until a bunch of tractors were stopped in front of us and kept revving their engines. He did not like that at all so we left for a walk and some lunch.

 We walked down the street at night to watch the fireworks and Sam slept through them. Overall, it was a great day.