backyard tuneup pt1

So as I alluded to earlier -- we have some backyard stuff to do. Some are upgrades I've been putting off for a while, others are re-do's. Apparently the stuff I planted a year ago didn't last too long as my dogs slowly ate them. No I'm not kidding. The added stress of summer temps didn't help either. I've tried resurrecting the planting beds several times, but for some reason or another they don't last in the eye candy department. A big reason is my dogs -- looks like they're going to be spending more time indoors. I don't care to revisit this again. Ahem.

A big thing I've been meaning to get to is repointing the rock wall at the rear of the yard, adjacent to the alley. If you'll recall when I did this the first time around, we set up a neat planting bed running along a third or so of this wall. This was all smoke and mirrors at the time as I knew the wall was in no shape to take the added deterioration from draining water. I'm not exaggerating here, there really wasn't much holding much of this back wall together other than gravity. I also never liked how the retaining wall was somewhat unstable as it wasn't able to interlock. The bottom was perfectly flat, but the tops had a rough cut stone finish. So after several courses there were certain rows that didn't really feel solid even after cherry picking them to fit well.

So we took down the retaining wall, and the entire rear wall was repointed with fresh cement on both sides. They popped in some PVC "weep holes" to allow for water drainage as well. The pseudo stone blocks were then re-stacked with a little mortar to hold them together. You'll have to wait till next time to see the finished product.