My Retaining Wall

So, ever since I moved into my place, my front yard has been the eye sore of the neighborhood. I have this wood retaining wall sorta thing that is slowly creeping its way down the hill of my street. It is also sporting a cornucopia of dead plants and tree type things, both never-greens and some ivy. Every time I drive into my drive way I am just embarassed that i live there and haven't taken care of it by now. I figured my year-long grace period was finally over so I began tackling it.

I talked to a few people at work about how to fix these retaining walls and the concensus was to get rid of the wood and replace it. However, if the wood was still good, you could salvage it by just rebuilding it... so I was hoping that would be the case, but I really couldn't tell because of all the dead foilage (said like marge simpson). So my first task, and one that I completed today, was to rid the retaining wall of all the dead crap. I did that... which included much stumping pulling and weed yanking... but it is mostly done. It looks a ton better without all the dead crap, but the retaining wall looks like it is in bad shape. the wood is pretty rotted out so it looks like I am going to have to replace it... which is going to be a ton of work.

i ran a 5k this morning and I was pretty happy with my time. I ran around a 6:30 pace I believe.... i can't quite be certain because I screwed up the old watch again. Apparently when I get really tired I can't function well enough to understand what the two buttons on my watch do. you think it would be pretty straightforward... stop and split. how hard could it be? apparently very hard. anyway, when I get my final time I will certainly post it here.