after many months of thought, I decided to just "DO IT"!

the date was set for a work meet of CGGRS (Central Georgia Garden Railroad Society) and there was lots of prep work to do........and talk about doing things the hard way......

The area I selected for my layout used to be a 60' perennial flower garden that had become overgrown with weeds and what is fondly (not friendly, and not even sure it's fondly) referred to as common Bermuda grass.  And of course, there were some shrubs that needed to be dug out and relocated as well.  So I instructed my yard helper, Eric, to start weed wacking and spraying the Roundup.  I had wanted to salvage some of my plants, but being a typical male, Eric didn't distinguish the weeds from the flowers, so what I got left with were some shrubs that he eventually did relocate, but I forgot about watering in the heat of the summer, and they died!

I knew I wanted a water feature in my layout, so the first thing I did, while Eric was killing my plants,  was drag my best  friend, Frances, and her hubby Charlie's pick up truck to the local Home Depot store and purchase one of those pre formed ponds that needed one of those gigantic holes dug in the ground.

  This is me, by the way, with my Granddaughter Kennedy, who now has her own "Can I play with this one Grandma"?

Well, after I got it home, I decided I didn't want to dig one of those gigantic 18" deep holes (Eric didn't look too thrilled either), so I decided we would sink the bottom portion of the pond 10" deep (yes Eric dug the 10" hole) and fill in around the pond with dirt. 3 truck loads of dirt (or was it 4, I forget, moved so much dirt around), two very achy backs (mine and Frances from unloading all that dirt), and lots of blisters on all our hands ,  what I ended up with was a pond sitting on top of a hill that looked a little displaced, depending on who's point of view you happened to be listening to.

Well, this pond sitting on top of a hill started to cause me a little concern about run-off and wash out, cause all I had retaining this area was some hand laid rocks maybe 4" tall at the most. The  decision was then made that  I needed to build a retaining wall in front of the site.