My good and hard-working friend Rick Barrett analyzes his most recent impossible situation, looking for clues. We got a call from a designer in Portland who designed this most interesting water feature from the comfort of her drawing board. While we agreed it would be a beautiful edifice, we also wondered just how we’d pull it off. The notion of hanging the deep black slate, composed of various thicknesses but the same color, off a block cement wall posed some bizarre and – to us – new material. It would have to be cement, owing to the varied thicknesses of the slate. All sort of adhesives could do the job, but the thickness thing hung us up. We needed a material which would allow us some “squeeze room” in order to have the absolutely perfect outer dimensions to align. Anything other than perfection – with water flowing over it – would show up like crazy.  And this referred not only to the top lip, where it would be grievous if not straight, but the front and sides as well.

Of course, I neglected to mention that the plan also called for adding real rocks at the front and a corner of both levels of the falls system, making the cement idea even more emphatically needed.

(click on any image to enlarge)

So we arrived at a conclusion – erect the walls first, then nail burlap to the block walls, which would give the cement something to grab onto. It would also allow us just enough “wiggle room” to align all the slabs of slate so that they matched at every possible angle. Now, inasmuch as we are working with a natural stone product, total perfection would be absurd, layered and split as they are. But I believe Rick  got very, very close.

He’s a working dude!

I missed many episodes, picture-wise, as the construction proceeded, which I now regret. Often, we were busy elsewhere from the rear of the home, working on the landscaping out front or one the sides, which involved irrigation and the construction of some garden carpentry projects.  Rick did almost every bit of the water feature by himself. He also – it bears mentioning – erected the stone walls. I thought his work was masterful and so did the client and even the designer.

The blue tarp, for the record, was not only handy for preventing the brick walls from getting splashed with wet cement or from the splatter from the debris of brick and stone-cutting, but it also doubled as a “rain roof”, keeping the guys and the stuff dry.

Generally speaking, here it is on the day we pretty much left, all done up and proper.

Quite a change from the first shots…………..note the stones – and not only the Basalt Chrystal cemented around using that “exposed aggregate” concrete finish. Note as well the insertion of natural stones by the bottom basin as well, sort of stuck into the patio floor finish. It added a natural touch. The patio is also cantilevered over the water, allowing us to hide the water pump which sits in the bottom basin. There is far more to this project than meets the eye, I guess is what I am saying.

A bit longer view -

Now closer -

With some cool garden carpentry in the form of these trellises.

This was an interesting project, also.

Here’s a project whose photo’s were taken pretty much as we were leaving – the day we “finished” installing all the plants and mulches and what-not. I was supremely satisfied, feeling certain what we had put in would develop well. This is the “real” version of what many of these places look like when first completed. To say patience can pay dividends is quite an understatement. We worked within a tight budget here, selecting smaller sized plants from nurseries, opting for “more bounce for the gold ounce”. These guys were also incredibly good at taking care and nurturing their place, I hasten to add. Steve and Mary, I salute you! 

This was the result, not that long afterwards, I’m thinking 2 years:

Maybe an even  better perspective of the same angle:

Another perspective, same project. I am so in love with Penstemons, it’s almost sick, lol:

Same time frame:

The combination of intense and plentiful sun, mixed with a very, very scrupulous addition of brand new and upgraded topsoil in huge amounts, make Reno, Nevada – where this project was completed – almost uniquely situated to produce phenomenal growth in certain types of plants. Perennials absolutely love Reno, or at least the sun-loving varieties such as Penstemons, Lavender, Salvia and the likes. Give the soil a touch of acidity, give the roots a medium to grow in and – whoa! Needless to say, the Aspens shown here grow at an equally phenomenal rate:

Two years is a short period of time for a landscape. After one, this actually approached what it looked like.

And here’s a totally gratuitous look back:

And here we have another year under the belt, showing us yet more recent growth:

This next project was my business partner, Bill’s house. Now, this is a bit unfair, because we could tinker with this one on days off or when Bill had emergencies – like visits from family, lol. So we began with something along these lines, just after we completed the creek and waterfall (which we later raised!):

And the lawn! Can’t fergit the lawn!!

Anyway, these became something else, too (I think we improved the lawn):

And we wrought some other changes in a couple short years, too:

Incredibly, I actually get paid to do all this!

Then there are the Supremely Big Humongous Projects of acreage and plentiful dust. The onset of projects such as this are impressively intimidating as heck. Showing up with a 3 or 4 man crew makes the owners go “Huh?”

“You mean you work too?” (Truth is, I said the same “Huh?” when I saw the darn thing – in almost every case. It always seems to have an element of “Gulp!” to it, to be perfectly honest.)

My response is always “Sure! We ready!!” 

Starting with this you can plainly see there is a “ways” to the second picture, especially considering we placed those rocks:

But we did it:

From the other direction:

Next time, we’ll visit a water feature ‘time lapse’, where we will wonder how we got anywhere at all from here. Poor Leo, lol. Another day of liquid sunshine in Portland, Oregon!:

To here ( a nicer day :

To this:

I will absolutely not name names in my blog, other than referring to conversations of a casual or humorous nature. But I can tell of stories where people were strikingly miserable who were wealthy into the hundreds of millions and even billions. They’re people too! They need landscaping and all that stuff. Let’s just say – on a personal level – in many cases people get predictably suspicious of others when they have a lot. There is something to the adage that plenty yields some paranoia. Sometimes, a whole dam lot of it. In some cases, it becomes a threat to your own security. The rich play by their own sets of rules. In fact, many is the time that they make them up!

Anyway, rather than continue this line, knowing nothing we can say will change things that much, just know that merely working for impressive people with “beyond-impressive” homes is not some automatic entree to becoming rich one’s self. You can also go broke working for them – and almost just as easy. Sometimes – through no real fault of your own.

Here’s the third most expensive home in the US: (weighing in at a mere $100 million)

Here’s the pool! That’s marble, by the way.

Now, I admit, that was something of a freak show. In one case, it may well have been the most nervous time I ever spent landscaping. We literally had to transport ourselves in a huge excavator, complete with about an 8 ton boulder in our grasp, for placing in a water feature I regret to say I have no pictures of. The slightest rock or article in the way as we crept inside could have tipped the machine enough to scar the walls – or worse, of course – of the granite facing, there was that little tolerance. In fact, we graded and raked towards a perfect finish underneath, just so we could get that monster machine between the walls without incident. It was a white knuckle experience, right off the get go. In fact, as interesting as this project might seem to an outsider, it was a small version of Hell in many ways, there were so many eyes, including the owners – on us at all times. Nor did we last – lol, there were a total of 5 different companies who worked on the project, jettisoned one after another like players on a chessboard. Some projects are not worth the trouble, frankly. And that’s a tough lesson.

Now here’s a mere 17 million dollar home. Now we’re slumming!! Actually, this homeowner was in the dumps at various times for reasons which were his own, lol. I confess, I never really cared for the dude. He once referred to it as a “dump”. Go figure. Fortunately, we were contracted by the builder, rather than the owner, so we almost got paid completely! Oh – I almost forgot – it’s rare to get all your money with many of the more miserable of these types. What really makes that odd is the generation of higher prices to begin with for the proactive contractor, familiar with their ways. I once literally gave a rebate to a client in this category of wealth because he paid his bill in full. I’m not kidding, either. It may well have been the best few bucks I ever spent too. He sent more people my way than I had time to do.

So here’s what $450,000 worth of landscaping will get you: (bear in mind the more open areas were filled with perennial and annual plants and some very gorgeous lamps and lighting which were articles of beauty on their own at about $250 a piece, copper tulips, in fact, with blooms for lights, all multicolored. It is typical of this site that my pictures are made either during construction or soon – like real soon – after completion. We then move on.)

That waterfall there is a two part deal, branching out at the top and going in both directions. Here is the other side of it:

From the street, here is a longer range view:

Nor were these the only water features! We installed this one up by the front door.

It’s rather hard to make out owing to the fact that our drip irrigation  sprayers were on at the time. Those Aspens, by the way, were our additions. 30′ feet high, it was a mighty tight fit putting them in so close to the house. They each weighed a couple of tons and were placed by a monstrous hydraulic tree spade, along with some Noble and White Firs we placed at other locations nearby.

Anyway, here is what the little water feature looked like in process. From this:

To this, then the finished product above. What was funny was that we decided to toss this in as a “toss-in”:

It had one humongous rear patio of stamped concrete:

The stone work was a triumph, however. These walls really add to the overall ambiance terrifically:

The driveway was an interesting mix of brick pavers and stamped concrete.

I really enjoyed the brick work on this project. It worked out outstandingly. Note the Firs in the picture above. Those we also planted, same with the Aspens. Here is a look at the large trees we inserted before we worked on the pavers. One is before we finished the project and the other is after. Of perhaps even more interest is a look at the wild numbers of electrical wiring, pipes and the general traffic in underground services, shown only slightly in the picture just below. Wiring for lights was inserted at the same time as the irrigation piping, irrigation wiring, electrical for the pumps running the water feature (220V) and even power for the heat tape and security gate which goes under the brick driveway:

Stressful at times, yet often resulting in sublime satisfaction for purely selfish reasons as an artisan and tradesman, projects such as these are what we literally die for.

I have a few of these cataloged and I await some pictures from my brother which include other outrageous projects, all of which mixed pleasure and pain in ample amounts – and in every conceivable way.

Note also the business of the lighting which we provided access for by drilling downwards and pulling the necessary wiring from the house. Along with railings, iron work and any number of possible additions, the lighting here adds a value-added and experience-enhancing element. The totally adjustable rate of light made for romantic or well-lit evenings, good for watching stars or for some more focused work.

(click all images to enlarge)

Other purposes for walls – and probably without doubt the most common – deal with terrain and grade changes. Steeply-sloped land causes some problems, not the least of which is the probability of erosion and the subsequent messes after torrential rains. Most of the prefabricated wall systems are designed to withstand the hydrostatic pressure which builds behind the walls when things get wet. A saturated soil still feels the gravitational pull of the water inside the earth and that water still acts like a river – everything wants to run downhill. This implies pressure, simply put. In fact, it implies one heck of a lot of pressure. Nothing, in the end, quite matches the power of water in its urge to break through to release.

We therefore work with this fact in every construction. In the rainy environments I have lived in, such as Portland and Vancouver, BC, the task  in many ways is easier, actually. Unlike Reno, the rain is predictable, even in the amounts – lots! Reno, meanwhile, can wait 7 months between rainfalls. Then you often get snow and rain – in order! All of that badly-needed precipitation is generally packed into about 3-4 months of time – Winter. And even then in strong deliveries. What is first involved, then, in any wall system, is the base.  Secondly, is the drainage. But we start at the bottom. If it is not sturdy and perfect, the entire edifice is not sound. And, yes, they will most certainly collapse.

Here’s typically what we begin with:

The initial excavation includes all the computations we arrived at in the design process. Where the drain pipes go, what to do with the water, how high the wall will be, all that. It’s always something else watching it knit together.

Once the wall is excavated, we bring in base rock, very similar to how we lay pavers. Where the blocks will go will have nearly a foot of base material to provide that sturdy foundation. Actually, we do this on all our wall constructions, no matter the material. Even large rocks, we like putting in a compacted base underneath. We will pound the loose ground under a construction until it is rock hard, then back fill or lay in the material. Even railroad tie retaining walls require the same. This picture is a small part of a quarter mile’s worth of double and triple stacked walls in Vancouver. Under each one of them, we added gravel and compacted it like crazy. Now 23 years from the time it was installed, it has not moved an inch.

The draining of the walls is probably number on on the Importance Index. Even a dry climate gets rain – and sometimes then, they are torrential. It can make life weirder.

Here’s an example of how we drain even small walls which have hills and thus wandering water building pressure behind it:

Here is an example of drainage, right from the first. This will be a walled enclosure to hold a spa/hot tub. It will sit nicely into the hillside, providing privacy and some muted sound. The fabric-covered pipes will tuck in around the base of this wall at an angle that conducts the water away. From the top of the wall, we put a foot-wide gravel-filled trench close to the wall itself. This allows the water to drip down into the pipes and then get carried away. Since we also installed a paver patio on this project, we managed to trench ourselves and guarantee a proper course for the water by putting solid pipe underneath.

In stages:

Here is what it resulted in:

The wide array of rocks, concrete products and wood materials available for wall-making is pretty impressive. In most cases, the materials can be specified to match the desired ambiance of an overall project. From an aesthetic perspective, this is a total plus – I mean  just having that range of possibilities. But from a practical perspective, there are only a few “right” ways to build them.

Prepare the base well. Drain the walls. Take the water away or watch them fall down.

Remember the first picture up there of excavating? Here’s what it looks like almost done:

(pardon the incomplete look, by the way – the tarps, the bags of mortar – I have always had the methodology of completing work and then moving on. It’s only recently that I have considered I might want later looks at completed projects. I thus prove my standing as a contractor, lol. Not only can I be predictably late, I also forget where I’ve been!)    Oh, and here is why this owner wanted that wall with few plants. Below is the view from his patio:

Another angle for this 270 degree vista of Reno and the distant mountains, looking South – he had a rare lot. An average house which he gussied up nicely inside, but one heck of a cool lot:

The neighbor to this project got into the act as well, lengthening the stay and complicating things in the best ways and so we ended up doing them as well. It actually made it easier because the neighbor had a great place to evacuate all the water. But we extended things and made stairs and a sort of a natural  finish by continuing the wall on the inside and outside. The curving wall at the end wraps around the neighbor’s property, complete with his own set of stairs.

In case you wondered about the copper-colored tiles, they were actually water features themselves. Quite attractive and quiet, they supplied the virtual sheet we and the owner were looking for, all controlled from the house. With the lights embedded into the pavers and some nice underwater lights in the reservoirs of the cascades, this made a totally warm and impressive patio, fabulous for parties. Here’s what it looks like when running:

All our walls are way too interesting to do. For some reason, I get a real kick out of wall-building. For example, this becomes the picture following:

(click on all pictures to enlarge)

Here we can see the water’s still running pretty murky, as we will also see in a lower photo. About this time, generally speaking, we are ready – believe it or not – to start planting the plants and running lighting wire for the outdoor lighting system. You can see our ‘12-2′ low voltage lighting cable (above) which we ran to a light under that small falls there. Some wires were also sent through the creek, between the rocks and over to the other side for uplighting trees with.

We also began adding the decomposed granite which compacts well and which will provide the traffic surfaces for the horseshoe pit, seen below leading off from the upper patio area. As well, we are adding “D.G.” to the pathways on the upper hillside which we carved out. We are pretty much at the compacting stage at this juncture. We will pack them, then get them wet and they tend to crust over nicely. In time, they make a perfect bottom.

Drainage Issue: It is a tedious chore, getting the grade just right, making sure rainwater and irrigation water all are directed away from the house to somewhere relevant that can conduct it then disperse it – in this home’s case – out to the front street, believe it or not. That’s a long way and we made small sorts of rock-filled creek beds to do this with. These end up being an added feature, in the end, adding an aesthetic touch to a very functional consideration and necessity. In the picture below, at the very top, you can make out a small creek bed we installed for this purpose. Basically, half the lawn and lower section goes directly to there.

Time to start planting! Bear in mind, as exciting as this gets for me, I always see the future in what I put in the ground. Frankly, a newly-planted landscape can look pretty doggone barren when just finished, and especially one this large. I posted a picture below all this that shows us a look at this landscaping 3 years later. Suffice to say, you won’t believe the change. Yes, it is the same place.

OK, so on with the planting and the Green part of the gig:

It’s looking a bit more orderly out there now, don’t you think?

Hey!  Here’s the sod! (below) The sod comes on pallets of about 550 square feet each, with about 65 rolls per pallet or so. We lay these suckers one at a time, just like a carpet. While it is an exceedingly reliable “plant”, the grass, since it occupies so much space, is a huge development towards finishing. It makes everyone’s day, honestly. Grass is the one finishing operation that really brings it all together and points the way downhill. There is much to be done yet, but there is something “final” about seeing the green grass outside after staring at dust and mud for a month or so.

Here, we are adding the final pieces, getting ready to trim the edges, roll it all down firmly, then give it its first dose of good watering. We will adjust the sprinklers perfectly at this time and set the clock for a test of it as well. Right now, Hugo is adjusting the radio, a constant need (!) while sodding as everyone must know! We had some good dance music going on for much of this, I remember. Yes, some of it was Mexican on demand, but I got my time in with some good R & B, too. Sam and Dave and James Brown can do a lot for motivation!

Here’s a look from above. What a difference a day makes!

The two colors of the grass were merely different crops, cut at different times. I warned them of this possibility and that it meant zero, in the end. Inasmuch as the grass comes essentially fertilized, it takes about two-three days for the green to really start setting in.

Our remaining work is all “finishing” at this stage. I term applying the irrigation to all the plants as “finishing”, although classically, it’s still construction. But one thing we can get accomplished while setting up the drip irrigation lines and running the appropriately sized pipes and emitters to the trees and plants is that we bury the lines, then rake the dirt - in other words, we finish those areas. This project would not need mulching until some future date, owing to the expense – it was one of the ways we budgeted things – and it turned out delightfully. We were able to use a pre-emergent herbicide for the first two years and weeds just never got any purchase at all. Jeff and Denise were also able to add plants wherever they wanted quite a bit easier than by dealing with a mulch cover.

Here, below, Romero is adding the emitters to the “main line”, a 3/4″ drip line that he sends a bit of smaller pipe off of with an emitter which regulates the amount of water delivered to the plants roots per hour. The coiled pipe seen in the picture above is this 3/4″ pipe. It goes to every single plant on the property, run off a valve in a timed release. Drip irrigation is the single greatest achievement in landscape technology in my recent history. It applies the water exactly where it goes – to the roots – and does not evaporate in the air or cause wasteful watering which is endemic with spray systems. For those who wonder, that’s a Weeping Larch tree beside Romero there, a favorite plant of mine. The Larch is one of only two deciduous conifers in the world. They look amazing in the Spring, when they ‘re-needle’, in a soft green that gets greener. The weeping characteristic I have always found terrific around water features. “Weepers” are a Steve characteristic.

We also did work on the upper paths, naturally, but in every respect relating to finishing, starting with the top - running the irrigation up there and then bringing it around, we were always working our way out.

Here’s the patio area. The grass is greening up as promised and the line is about to be buried.

Time for the all-important Road Testing” of the horseshoe pit. Jeff was not going to be easy to please, and especially with his Father-in-Law as competition. I gave them a break and didn’t compete with them. They got a break without knowing it, lucky stiffs.

He liked it!  Well, we were just about finished. Please note the scrawny and tiny little plants all set there looking so lonely and forlorn. Then please look at the picture at the very bottom, 3 short years later.

Meanwhile, guess where our next project was!

Here you go, three years later! Different?

Here’s another look at the more mature place:

In the end, I stood next to Denise as I collected the final check and we had a moment to assess everything – the relations, the progress, the push and pull sometimes, all in respectful ways – and we shared one of the best moments I ever had as a contractor. We hugged briefly, and she spoke of all the guys she would miss (It’s an excellent, proud, professional and nice crew) and how the action would be so slow now for her hyped-up young red heads and how they’d miss seeing us. (It did take a full month to do.). I looked at her and I quietly asked: “Denise, do you like it?”

Denise started sobbing. “God, Steve, I l-l-l-ove it!” she said, tearfully. I looked at her and was just awed. I was dumbstruck, I swear. She was telling the truth and we had shared the deepst sort of history and warmth together in just that moment. I was embarrassed, because I had put a lot into it, myself, and I began tearing up a little myself. Honestly, who wouldn’t??

It was just the best dang thing I ever heard. I’ll cherish that one moment forever. Love you, Denise!

(Incidentally, for those of you to whom this looks familiar – it should. This was posted just about a year ago in this blog. With me moving this week to Kentucky, all bets are off for at least a week on adding new posts. I may add one Tuesday, but I leave early Wednesday. New people show up a lot who may or may not have browsed through this now-fairly-large blog. This is for them.)

(click on any picture to enlarge)

What 4 year old in his right mind would not dig (pardon the pun) this set up?? Huge and gnarly, all these humongous toys kept them entranced as long as they were awake. Below, for example, is what it looks like when you get 20 yards of topsoil delivered to your house just a few feet from your favorite back window!

This picture is us digging those tiny (not!) channels for irrigation pipes. Hey, you use what you have!

The Story

The home was pretty much Jeff and Denise’s “dream home”. After getting the inside of their place whipped into shape, they then focused outdoors, naturally enough. They had a full acre out back and they wanted to maximize what they could get out of it. They provided me with a laundry list of things they wanted which read something like this:

1.) A running water feature with a creek and small pond. 2.) A platform and an electrical (220V) supply near the water feature for setting up a spa away from the house. 3.) A nice big irrigated lawn with a surrounding pathway for the kids and their trikes and – eventually – bikes and motorized transportation. 4.)A horseshoe pit straight out the back. 5.) A play area for the kids. 6.) Some pathways on the rear hillside. 7.) An upper level patio, very informal, bedded in Decomposed Granite.

They were looking for ways to squeeze the budget which would still allow them to get all the goodies they wanted. The list was long and challenging but I immediately saw the potential in the overall landscape. We would take advantage hugely of the hillsides surrounding the East and Rear sides of the property, using it for our creek and the spa placement. Providing pathways would be easy and interesting and would cut through the landscape in a winding way. Jeff and Denise and I huddled and came up with a reasonable budget. Helpful – no that is an understatement – what swung the deal in favor of total possibility  was that Jeff could provide all the machinery we would need. What also helped were his connections regarding trucking and rock suppliers – there being some excavations nearby that had the marvelous rocks you see throughout the property. That brought the budget down so far that suddenly it was all as doable as it could be. So we shook hands and took off on our grand landscaping experiment. It would be fun, especially inasmuch as Denise was at home with the boys and offered her opinions daily and in an unobtrusive and truly cooperative fashion. In the end, she has as much to do with the ultimate look as anyone. I consulted with her often, and as often at my request. She was always a treat, honestly.

Anyway, we began and, once we finished the irrigation issues, and after burying the pipes and backfilling them, we were ready to entertain deliveries of both rocks and soil, both in the 200 yard range as totals. So, here they came:

Once delivered, staging became an increasingly knotty problem. In the picture above you can see us placing rocks in their eventual resting places with the smaller excavator placing them and the larger one picking and separating them just after their arrival. They tended to come in 3 sizes, from humongous 2-3 ton slabs, to medium sized ones from 500-1,000 pounds, to smaller, one man sized rocks. It is actually somewhat tedious at this stage, in a way, although the placing of permanent fixtures is always bracing and challenging. You can never get bored with supplying something permanent for a client – the appearance and selection will be there for ever. Some heavy duty cosmetics here. So, anyway, things began taking some shape.  In this picture, both the “upper level patio” and the horseshoe pit have been outlined in boulder placement.

Yes, there is still one huge pile of rocks down there. That is for some detail work as well as almost entirely dedicated to the water feature, which is being scratched out in the picture below. We typically excavate the channel which the water and all acoutrements will follow, then add the liner and, of course, the rocks defining it last.

And there you have your standard-average scooped out water course. Next, we make the water feature, starting at the top:

Adding rocks on top of liner is always the single most nerve-wracking part of any large job. One false move with that machine and the rock – and especially this type of “fractured rock”  – can poke holes in the liner, the worst possible result. So we operate gingerly to say the least and we also use other pieces of the liner wedged between the new rocks and the liner to protect the all-important liner itself, providing a measure of security as we worked.

The excavators we like using for these events are amazing tools. You act like a jeweler or watch smith or something placing one and two-ton boulders as precisely as possible in place. Plus, you always get helpful advice, lol.

Looks like Chaos, don’t it??    Note also another wonderful development which is the very durable flexible pipe we use as the source. This one was a 4 inch pipe and made the project ten times more do able..

Now just add cement and we’re finally getting somewhere!

So that yields to this:

Next post, we add plants, grass and finish all the paths and stuff. I think you can see the madness all actually had some later-crystallizing plan to it. Thousands did not!  Had to say it.

Each of those trees required careful handling, using chains and our largest machines to lift them from the truck and to set them gently down. Obviously, it was no slam dunk planting them either, but the picture below these shows we had some definite “beef” handling the merchandise.

Here’s the “Beef”! Yes, I am the joker in the middle, surrounded by 200+ pound Mexicans. The guy with his arm around me was a baseball legend in Mexico, all from the same ranchero. I’ve been to their parties and their Baptisms and, to this day, I miss them all. Good folks and hard working as heck.

Keeping it non-weather-related as yet, let’s go ahead and take a look at what we had finished when the weather did hit. Here are the results of 3 months of work, pretty much 6 days a week.

Starting with the trees, we moved to paving, then lawns, complete with irrigation – and lots of that. We also picked up another family of guys along the way, 3 more brothers, who sped us along. Let’s see what we did:

The brick paving wound around the entire house, from the driveway to the patio at the “back” of the house (from this view) and back again, to the driveway. After finishing the paving, we paid attention to those “Bubble Rocks” mentioned at the onset. We had two clusters of them to make – one much larger than the others. The smaller set of 3 were geared for sheer sound alone – a gentle trickle to help my friend’s mother-in-law sleep better at night and to balance out a sense of scale. Thus, we used some pretty small rocks and had them bored out. We did have a semblance of a design in mind but – as is always the case – seeing the rocks themselves finished it off. Here’s what we came up with:

This (above) picture is during their construction – with the water running – and here’s a somewhat dark look at a reasonably finished product:

And here are their “Big Brothers” at the other end of the patio:

Or from a floor-level perspective, down the patio, they are at the end:

After pretty much finishing the patio area, we began focusing on filling in between the trees we planted with plantings next to the house. At the same time, we began putting down the lawn:

I looked for ways and reasons to integrate wide-sweeping curves into the parameters of the lawn and so we invented some roadways and pathways just to say we did. It resulted in inventing an access point for the owner’s wife and her small 4 wheelers and turned out to please them immensely.

Now, some of these are taken during the Spring following our “Disaster cleanup” so forgive the sequence dissonance if you have some. It would be understandable. Had I realized I would be supplying a blog like this back then, the pictures would have been something else. But as it is, I think we can see what was going on in general.

These two pictures (above and below) are taken from the highest lawn level, up by the garage housing equipment and a big old RV. These pictures are taken from the farthest North and South corners of that upper lawn.

And here’s some plantings, mixed in with this lawn shot on the outside of the partio area.

Here’s a look in the other direction, pardon the amateur second picture.

A final look at some plants, this down the driveway:

It was a lot of work, lol.

This is a view of the project from the nice and bucolic highway out front of this place. The road actually travels the length and width of Washoe Lake, a lake about 15 miles South of Reno that has been a recreational and great fishing spot for Renoites for decades. This particular highway was once used as the primary link between Reno and the state capital of Carson City until a sort of super highway was constructed on the other side of the lake in a more direct path to Carson City. Yes, it is smack in the middle, more or less, of Northern Nevada’s High Desert. And, yes, this property is pretty doggone large – 10 acres of landscaping, in fact. That’s big for anyone, much less my crew of about 4 other persons. But it was one of those challenges I could not resist. The owner – a friend and client for commercial purposes – is a local builder who loved the relative isolation and the superb vista’s this place tossed out like “mana from heaven”. As the post continues, you will see what I mean. It is every bit of that – just gorgeous. Well, our job was to make it gorgeous at home too, not just for the view. The fact is, we were working on someone else’s “Dream Home”. When this happens, you raise your game just a little.

Here is that view from the house:

And here from the road down below:

Back to the house now………………………………

A bit closer look here, inside the fence. If you notice the fine dust in the foreground, bear in mind the entire property was nothing other than that when we began. It was entirely shaped using local topsoil which was incredibly sandy/silty and which caused no end of problems for no end of reasons. It was the old lake bed, in fact, since about 10,000 years ago there was a 6,000 square mile lake connected to this one – Lake Lahontan. Up there in those hills – at about 200 feet – you can still find caves where fishing implements were found by local archaeologists.

Prominent among the problems we faced, of course, was the dust factor which the rather constant winds just exacerbated no end. (Our debt to the Almighty for creating the phenomenon known as “grass” knows no bounds.)  The other humongous problem, later, was erosion. Everything we did – even from the first – bore this in mind and we enacted every single bulwark we could against having the place just erode away. Our efforts paid off but there were still some dreadful surprises, including a legitimate “100 year storm” which tested our construction to the max.

You might know!

My charge was to complete his own small laundry list of items – 1.) 2 “Bubble Rock” clusters in his patio; one much larger than the other; 2.) for us to irrigate and supply some lawns areas, the design of which were up to me; 3.) obvious pathways throughout the property; 4.) a system of retaining the inclines throughout using rock placements; 5.) plantings for all these things and more. His wife and he were very much involved at every stage and were always helpful – never bothersome. She had a number of specific plants and he had his own specialties he wanted and could not care less about plants. “That’s all her’s!”  LOL.  Funny enough, what got done was they both maintained how much they enjoyed the specialties of the other, when completed. It was win-win! They and I could all feel smart as whips.

Inasmuch as we showed up on that dustpile with it absolutely fresh and barren, our first order of business – as usual – was to arrange rocks/boulders. We had some 25 loads of rocks delivered altogether in either doubles or in the back of 25 yard trucks. That makes just about 500 tons or so. Since we began the project in September, we had some pressure to try and shore things up and get the rock work done by the Winter, when Reno gets its snow and rains. It was fortuitous in so many ways for us. We pretty much finished the rock work in late October and began walkway paving and planting the trees next.

Many of the sloped areas – and there were a lot – required “keying in” lines of rocks at the base for purposes of holding the banks up. In some cases, more extremely-sloped areas, we added a row at the base. As well, we inserted boulders to help fortify the overall integrity of the slopes. I regret that quite a few pictures of this project have been lost – from the earlier stages. Nevertheless, I think it won’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out. After all, consider the author of this post.

The visible pipes and even the wires seen here are strewn completely throughout supplying the drip irrigation and the “uplighting” around trees which we installed soon after completing the tree planting. As can be seen, the pathway itself – and also the driveway – was also lit by small 7 Watt bulbs in frosted covers, illuminating a walkway and the drive in an area that can be virtually pitch black on cloudy nights. As astounding as the night sky was when it was cloudless, with a starry heaven just remarkable to behold, it could be just an severe when the night sky was not lit by a moon or stars. We are definitely talking about “out of town” here.

One of the “great good fortune” aspects was the time of year when we decided to go purchase plants and trees.  A local nursery – the largest in town – was clearing out a humongous stash of trees – any of which had been sitting in their nursery for more than 2 years. The implications for us were that we were able to acquire an absolutely obscene number of huge trees for about 1/3 their normal prices or even less. It was a fantastic development and it allowed us to plant better trees and plants arranged much thicker than I had ever dreamed. Needless to say, it made me look like a genius to the homeowner and he gave me some room to buy what I deemed worthy and plant them all appropriately. I was in 7th Heaven.

We were enabled to plant literal groves of trees such as these Jackmontii Birches above on the left. We also found 20 foot high Sequoia’s, a wild number of large Blue Atlas Cedars and Pines of all types. Blooming trees were available in abundance as well and I scooped up nearly everything they had for a serious Springtime Show for my friend’s place. We’ll see in the next post how that all worked out.

Only one thing kept the project from working out like an absolute dream…………………………… Weather.

That 100 year event I mentioned really did happen. Fresh off a huge snowfall, unbelievable rains began hitting an already-saturated ground, resulting in a basic catastrophe. All those hidden concerns about drainage and moisture disasters descended on the place and created a disaster. Next door, the entire hillside collapsed, running down onto our project, just liquid dirt, in tonnage, not just a little. Not only that, but the amount of water collected from the entire mountain came down as well. It seemed all those smart and wary moves we made considered everything but a disaster resulting from someone else’s property.

I’ll delve more into this insanity in the next post.