Being frugal (translation: tight as Mr. Scrooge), we would do the job of building retaining walls ourselves. That decision meant that we wouldn’t build the walls too high – thus avoiding building permits and digging two-foot deep footings. Since we were “doing-it-ourselves”, contractors to build forms and pour concrete walls were ruled out. Wooden walls would quickly rot, even as they attracted termites – so no wood.

I would have loved to install dry – stacked natural stone, but stone is expensive. We would have had to make countless trips to the stone yard with my Subaru pulling our two-thousand-pound capacity little garden trailer and we would have to unload each stone by hand. The other option was to pay for a big truck to deliver the stone all at once. After considering all of the above, I decided I could live without the stone.

Brick or block were the remaining options. Block comes in a variety of sizes, shapes and shades and we had already used blocks in other areas, so blocks it would be. Did I mention we are tight? We decided to use blocks already on hand, scavenging them from other garden beds that we are planning to re-do. By keeping each wall from two to four tiers, we could dry-stack the blocks, avoiding messy mortar.

We decided where the retaining walls would be installed and with what materials, and focused on the next step: creating flat and level areas to lay the blocks. This meant digging with shovels, fighting tree roots and broiling in the hot summer sun. Black, biting gnats, chiggers, ticks did not deter us. Well, really, we should have been deterred, but were too stubborn to quit.

Laying the blocks was next: my job was to manually load six 33.3 -pound blocks on the little garden cart which was hitched to our John Deere lawn tractor / mower, transport them to the work area and manually unload them. Wonderful Husband had the hardest part; kneeling on the ground and laying the blocks, one at a time. He has many faults (just ask me, I’ll tell ya!), but he can really lay blocks and make it look like a professional job: three beautiful retaining walls two to four blocks high, nice and level.