Some shots of the new retaining wall.  10 tons of bricks and about another 30 tons of dirt and fill were moved to make this.  I did most of the work myself by hand.  I used a mini-backhoe for the initial digging and had a friend help out laying bricks one afternoon (thanks, Paul!), but other than that I got a workout!  The bricks are the pinless/mortarless type, weigh about 70 lbs. each, and have an integral lip at the rear that locks the brick to the course below creating a consistent setback for each course.  The resolution from the digital camcorder is at it's worst trying to get a wide angle shot like this, but what can you do?  Again, sorry for the coarse images...
 

Here's a close-up of the east end.

 
 

The east end plus more of the middle.

 
 

The west end.

 
 

Close-up of some flowers in the middle, towards the west end (at the step in the wall in the "west end" shot).

 

Here's an overhead sketched view of the wall layout, to help make the pictures make more sense.  The hose spigot I added is really handy for watering the plants in this garden without having hoses stretched across the yard all the time.  You can also see it in the picture of the middle area above.  The wall height varies from 2 to 4 ft, mainly due to the slope of the lot (lower on the west end).

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Here is a shot of the deck with Steph (at about 7 months pregnant) standing on it.  Part of the deck was already constructed when the house was built.  Basically the builder cut off a corner of the kitchen and made it into a deck.  The nice thing about it is that the roof covers that section.  I designed and built the add-on, which is everything you see in this photo that sits to the left of the two posts (behind the grill).  The step-off is made of brick pavers (mortarless) in a bed of sand, and the decking is all Western Red Cedar.
 
 

A close-up of the garden that wraps around the side of the deck from the brickwork.  You can see the original part of the deck towards the rear of the photo, but it's all one continuous deck now so it really isn't obvious.