We have excavated for what will soon be a stamped concrete sidewalk connecting all the various elements.  The sidewalk will meet the stairs to the right and undulate throughout this back yard, hard by the water feature creek and falls.  Small lawn areas will bracket the walk where we can and two circles at either end will provide seating and a place to put the pails and tools for collecting grapes or for maintaining the place in general. 

With such a small tolerance for drainage, the lot being essentially level, out transit (“contractor’s level”) shown here set up to the right allows us to place appropriate grade stakes for marking the eventual height of the sidewalk.  It’s pretty vital to develop runoff, made more complex by the legal determinations that every home owner is responsible for not washing out his neighbor with his runoff.  Ironically, as dry as Reno is, it gets some serious water problems during the Winters when it catches pretty much literally all the rain and snow it gets for the entire year in a 3 month span.

As is obvious, we have also done some planting.  These developed quickly, as the finished picture will show. This place had ideal soil to begin with and we added much to bring it to grade.  This one will grow like crazy.