All that aside, we had a good timeline and task division setup, unfortunately as it turned out I should've factored in enthusiasm and fitness into the work rate equation as it didn't take too long before we were behind schedule - but, in the final analysis it didn't make much difference and we downsized the operation to do the side garden on an ensuing weekend.
« 24/07/1999 - The boys from Haisty & Lang were due to drop off the first load of scoria and ponga logs around 10am so the first order of the day was to start digging out the front lawn area where the scoria would go, the earth we lifted was trundled around the back to form the back garden. As you can see from the images, the area we were digging out was fairly bloody huge, in fact we only got half of the lawn dug out that weekend - but the earth we took out was always going to be greater than the amount of space we had to fill, so we started loading the sods and earth in behind the garage to get them out of the way (and also allow us to kill off all the Kikuku grass that infests my bloody lawns (but that will be another mission!)
08/08/1999 - After the long weekend there was just the ponga to go around the edges, bark to cover the new rose beds and down the Aorangi Road side of the house where a lavender hedge was planted. A whole heap of digging but the end result as you can see is pretty damn spanky.
While I don't have many pics of the building of the back garden, you can see what the final version looked like, the banked sides were made with much of the earth that was taken from the front lawn to create the driveway. The image below is how the back garden looked before "stuff" happened to it ... <sigh>
