The spring that my husband was 64 and retired by then for six years, he decided he would undertake a really colossal job by hand. Not for him the tendency to hire people to do difficult physical labour. Typically, he studied what he was interested in doing, finding background information, deciding how to proceed and then tackling it. This outdoors project was one of those, and there have been many.

He was determined to change the look of the gardens at the front of the house. He wanted to establish a good seating area, functional and attractive walkways and retaining walls to hold the gardens at the very front of the house. He looked around at different types of landscape materials, and we decided together what we preferred, then ordered impressive and frightening amounts of paving stones and much larger 'stone' pieces to construct the walls, and they were dropped by the skidload on our driveway.

First, though, came the outlines of where he meant the installation to be and it was extensive. With the intention of leaving the existing gardens pretty much where and as they were, simply building around them. With that in mind, those sixteen years ago, my husband began the arduous and time-consuming job of excavation, for nothing much could be done without digging down and creating the required foundation for his inspired garden hardscaping.

My husband has never been anything less than ambitious about the tasks he set for himself, not easily fazed by anything, he would study whatever it was, establish his groundrules and then proceed. And I cannot remember one instance or one project where he failed to produce his inspired result. We've been living with those results all our married life, which in total amounts to 61 years together.

As he excavated, there was the problem of what to do with the soil being removed. So we decided not to waste the soil, to take a break somewhat and work elsewhere, to build an extension to the existing garden, and that's just what we did, and in the process moved some of the shrubs, ornamental trees and perennials to the 'new' garden. I was thrilled with the opportunity to extend the garden in such a graceful manner and it didn't take all that long, perhaps a week. And during the process my husband was able to make use of some of that excavated soil. A few neighbours volunteered their welcome of some of the soil for their own gardens.

And from then on my husband worked from May until June daily to complete the excavation to a depth of about two and a half to three inches in depth, including a walkway and new 'steps' to the side door, from the front. The break he took from that backbreaking labour was to take an hour off each afternoon for a stroll in the wooded ravine, up the street from the house. He had years earlier installed a stonework (poured cement) balustrade on our front porch, and what he was now doing was a completion of that initial work.

Copious amounts of gravel was packed into the excavated areas, and tamped down with a head-rattling rented device, followed by sharp sand to bring the excavated areas up to their final height, and then began the job of laying and cutting both bricks and constructing the retaining walls. Everything was cut by hand, with the use of a stone-cutting chisel and a blunted hammer. Neighbours would drop by from time to time to chat and check on progress. They were accustomed to my husband's industry.

Several months after he began this enterprise, he completed it. The gardens were enclosed within the retaining walls and the walkways and the patios were firmly entrenched and patterned to perfection. In the years that have passed we've seen how our neighbours' walkways, professionally installed, have shifted and broken up and required remediation because they'd become unsafe, let alone unaesthetic.

During that same period of time, none of the work that my husband did sank or shifted one iota. We've had delicate mosses with exquisite little flowers growing between the bricks which only enhances their beauty. And we've enjoyed the stability of the entire project and the beauty it has conferred on our property, the exterior of our home.