Today was the day to finish the edging along the back yard fence, running from the gate to the side of the house. The pegs were hard wood requiring a bit of drilling and clamping, and they promise to hold well. The land slopes away from the house. To lay the edging level made it disappear into the ground at the upper end and look uneven with the fence. Stupid. I fudged the level and still had a clear two-inch lane along the bottom of the fence. In the end I applied sealer to the wood edging on both sides of the gate.
I laid a few bricks along the flagstones at the level of the edging. With incremental small shifts in each brick the line will follow the curve of the flagstones to the porch slab. The line of bricks and edging will allow me to add an inch of topsoil and soil amendment into that piece of garden bounded by the fence, the flagstones, the porch slab and the house. The ground level is uneven and can be filled in and leveled across. That corner has minimal soil; I have dug into hard pan within an inch or two of the current surface. The wood and brick edging should double that depth and allow for ground covers or shallow rooted plants, or at least give them a good chance to become established.
I may add a few flagstones beside the water valves along side the house. The flagstones would accommodate access to those valves and allow space for a hose box, if Mike can engineer a spigot there. He already connected the water line that allowed the two oleanders to thrive over the summer. That part of the back yard has two large areas for planting that will be thirsty next summer.
A Year at the Snake 