After spending some time tearing down the small, older garden (while preserving the old grape vine) I became frustrated with how hilly (not to mention rocky!) our yard is and so I decided to terrace it.
The thinking is to build a natural stone retaining wall and then fill in the low spots with dirt brought in from outside. The first step is to stake out the terraced area and then run level twine between the stakes to get a sense of how high the retaining walls would need to be and how much dirt to bring in. Here’s the surveying work in progress:
It seems that we’ll need about 1,000 yards of soil to level this up. And lots and lots of rocks!