Fabulous Brick retaining wall, part II

Sorry, everybody, I haven't actually taken any pictures of the brick retaining walls in the garden. This is sort of a shame, because there were several stages of the garden building (and it's not quite done yet), but it was also pretty ugly for awhile. Plus, I just don't take that many pictures. But it's finally shaping up, and I've loaded it with transplanted yellow-pear and cherry tomatoes, four different kinds of peppers, corn, carrots, eggplant, melons, more tomatoes, broccoli and some flowers (to attract the bees). We have one section left to dig out and level while adding
some better topsoil. And then it will be on to the front garden. D bought this book off amazon:

The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (by Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen);

and it's made me alot more comfortable about our jungle-like garden. Plus, I'm going to try out their suggestion to mulch over the beds this winter, & see how next year goes.

We've had dramatic weather here for a couple of weeks now, daily thunderstorms & the like. Being right at the top of the hill, we have an amazing view of any lightning the strikes over the city of Pittsburgh. And I'll post sometime later about a very strange lightning storm that I saw last weekend, once I get the description of it right :)

Naturally, we haven't been able to do quite as much work on the yard as we wish, and we're both trying to balance a big workload at work with moving forward on the house. We bought some insulation today for the second floor, and a new cordless drill (the last one's battery pack won't recharge). So next weekend, we'll (hopefully) start wiring some of the second floor rooms, and I may start removing the old heating system. We'll have to see how it goes. But for now, I have to go to sleep - it'll be a tough week coming up at work, but once it's done I'll have actually finished one experiment of my thesis!