So, over the last week, as a couple of you already know, I built a stone path in my backyard. Ei-Nyung, Sean, and a friend from work helped out – Sean and M. helped move more than two tons of rock from the driveway to the backyard, and Sean helped move another whole mess of gravel. Without the help, there’s no way it’d have been done in time, but with the help, the path was finished in a week (to within two hours).

It’s basically a path of bluish-greyish gravel and pinkish-orange stone that runs from the base of the backyard, in lazy S-curves all the way up to the loquat tree in the back. I used our electric tiller to create the pathway, then poured down two coats of gravel, placed the stones, poured on gravel to fill the cracks, soaked the thing with water, then added more gravel where it’d settled.

On the slope between the first and second tiers of the backyard, I found some rebar and a collapsed retaining wall that had to be removed. Over the course of about two days, I dug out the wall, used an electric jackhammer to break up the concrete, and a sawzall to cut out the rebar to the point where it was well below the surface. I used the tiller to create a smoothed out slope, soaked the dirt with water, and jumped around on it to compact it at least a bit.

All in all, it’s turned out pretty well – it divides the backyard up neatly into more manageable chunks, makes the whole thing much more accessible, and lends it some much-needed perspective. That is, it used to be that you could look at the backyard and have no idea how big it was – now, when you look at it, you can see from the path how far it goes back.

It was definitely a week well spent. The project was immensely satisfying, dramatically improves the back yard, and though tiring, was really … fun.

Not something I want to do again for at least a while, but there’s still some gravel to haul to the back. Maybe another hour or two of work, just to clear out the driveway. Good times.