Retaining Wall

This is what we worked on over Labor Day weekend. We moved all the huge rocks that were there. As you can see they haven't gone far. We plan on re-purposing them on a project in the front yard. Then we put in the bricks and hauled in a bunch of dirt to fill it in with. We found some free dirt on Craigs List. I think Kenny made 3 trips with the SUV. A tedious task, but free and very helpful.

I plan on planting a bunch of various bulbs and flowers along the fence line here. It will brighten up the dingy backyard so much! 

This corner we'll be planting some trees to block the ugly view of the neighbors backyard. They have a "shed" covered in blackberry bushes.

This is the best before picture I could find. We jumped into the project so quickly I didn't get a chance to take any pictures before we got the wall up.

This is the view from our deck. It's not completely finished, but I am amazed by how MUCH better it looks already!

We had planned on taking the wall almost all the way across the backyard....

But we ran into these suckers. We knew there were a couple big roots we would have to cut out since we have two huge trees back there. As Kenny continued to dig we found more and more.

 Then we hit this one and knew there was no way we could cut these roots with out killing the gigantic tree. Now we are trying to formulate a plan. Take tree out (VERY expensive)? Have wall go around the roots (kinda odd looking)? No wall (we really, really want one)? If you have an idea we'd would love to hear it!!