We must cultivate our garden

"Il faut cultiver son jardin."
Voltaire, Candide

Introductions
This is the first post of what I hope will be many about our backyard. Why am I backyard blogging? Well, after two long years of waiting, wanting and at times needing a backyard, we're poised to actually begin work. We've talked to landscape architects. We've been to nurseries, we've been to city hall, we've talked to builders, we've talked to engineers, we've examined our ecological footprint, we've badgered friends, bored relatives and, well, you get the idea. Here's the thing, though, we're doing all the work ourselves, with (we hope) a little help from our friends.

Rationale
Why, you ask, are we doing the work ourselves? I would like to say that it's because we know what we're doing and that we're licensed landscape professionals. That would be an egregious fabrication, however, because I teach French and my partner teaches child development. (You can begin laughing, crying or sweating now.) We are landscaping neophytes but we've come to the conclusion that we can't afford professionals except where absolutely required by law. All I can say to your protests and to your mockery is "we know already!"

But here we go anyway.

You see, we've talked to landscape architects and contractors and searched the world over for all the solutions to our backyard yuppie dreams, and all of those solutions start at 50,000 dollars.*

F-i-f-t-y-t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d.

Maybe you didn't know it, but steel and concrete costs are way up. This is true. I didn't believe the contractor's bid, in fact, I laughed cried as I screamed "Get the hell off of my property you shyster." But then we started shopping around, doing more research and we realized that we we're dreaming when we thought we could start the work on the yard for anything less than 30,000. Reality: we didn't and don't even have 30k to spare. I haven't seen the contractor again. Hmm.

A New Backyard at 15,000 Dollars?
We have about 15,000. Within that budget, we hope to have a livable, environmentally friendly backyard with flat living spaces, terraces, retaining walls, sprinkler system, lights, etc. Can you get all that for 15k? We'll we're not sure, but, by the sweat of our brow and the seat of our pants we're hoping for it.

If we fail we've got some good advice from our colleague's wife, who put it this way: "When it gets to that point where your relationship is in trouble because your backyard renovation is not going as planned, hiring a contractor might be more efficient than a therapist."

Lost to the sands of time?
So we haven't so much as stuck a shovel in the ground, but we've actually spent a lot of time fretting, thinking and dreaming. Talking to prospective landscape architects, nursery visits, books, phone calls, going to city hall, figuring out materials all takes energy and time. We don't want our efforts to be lost to the sands of time and we hope that our story here will be of help to the outside world. So we'll be showing you our plans and talking about where we've been, and we'll be posting pictures and information about the building process as we go. That's what this blog is about.

I don't know how things are going to turn out, but I'm looking forward to the next couple of months. I hope that our experiences, both good and bad, can be informative.

*As you'll seen in later posts, the number is high because we need to terrace our backyard. That means walls, and walls mean money.