One Good Wall Deserves Another

There are lots of nice things about cement blocks. They make great retaining walls that greatly slow down inevitable erosion. They are easier to collect than boulders. They have flat surfaces that can adhere to one another and take stucco. They also can replace inclines lined with rocks and free up those rocks and the occasional boulder for use elsewhere in one's landscape design. And, perhaps the greatest incentive, little critters can't tunnel through them and, if tall enough, javelina are reluctant to jump over them.

So after a few years of loose rocks slipping, critters tunneling, and javelina munching on the roots of ornamentals by my main traversing walkway, I counter-attacked. I made several trips with Agamemnon to Lowes and Home Depot to bring back cement blocks, concrete mix, stucco mix, liquid nails, pea gravel, and clay bricks. I removed my precious native Catalina rocks, dug a trench, and did a rough layout of the wall.

The work is exhilarating and satisfying, although when the lizards are scampering around mid-morning, it's time to get out of the heat. After about a week of early morning work, four or five hours at a time, the block wall was stuccoed, painted, and topped with clay bricks.

I would sit in our outdoor living room and admire not only the pleasing order which I had imposed upon the landscape, but the new areas where I had created terraces with the rocks and the occasional boulder I had freed up.

I noticed something missing.  I had constructed individual lengths of concrete block retaining walls interspersed with natural Catalina rock in our gully (Coat Hanger Valley). I had retaining walls along the slopes defining paths and three sets of stairs leading down to the bottom of the gully, but where you first cross the driveway to get to those paths was untidy. It needed some inviting refinement to entice a person to saunter inside. It needed an entrance.

That required a curve, three test roughed-in layouts, welcome advice from my better half, and a lot of additional trench modifications and cement blocks. The curve was made using three columns of landscape retaining wall wedges between columns of concrete blocks, then filled and smoothed with concrete and stucco.

In my opinion, the result is satisfying. I am almost tempted to have something written out on the curve — you know, in metal letters like universities have their names on masonry curves at the corners of their campuses. Instead of "University of Arizona," I could have "Coat Hanger Valley."

Nah.