Hot Tub!

I have big plans for my garden, which naturally means that I should spend some time tearing it up.

Destroying the yard is actually the confluence of two things. First, it has been extremely dry here in San Francisco, and many of my plantings are beyond stressed and have died. Generally, I enjoy the zen of weeding and pruning, but because of the draught, things have gotten so straggly, I have pretty much neglected the yard entirely. It was time for a major clean up. For kicks, I went back and looked though some of my old posts about the garden, this post from January of 2013 shows it when it was far more lush, even with less mature plantings. (Remember this yard started as a bare dirt lot back in 2008).

Second, we are finally going to pull the trigger on a cedar soaking tank for Kit, and are trying to go as big as possible in our little back yard, which means we need to clear out some plants to make room for this monstrosity.
  

We're going to put the soaker on the East side, up against the retaining wall, where it gets the most sun and will be least obtrusive. We are trying to go really big, and for this reason thought it best to mock it up with story poles to get a real sense of height and diameter. If you have no idea what what a soaker tub is, click here to see my inspiration.

We're shooting for 10' in diameter and 4.5" deep. We are going with this depth because -for a multitude of reasons (which I will go into later as this thing is built)- we want to be able to place it on a pad at ground level and not sink it into the ground. 

By the time I took this photo, my mock up was looking like a circus tent. The high points of the string, are the true height of the top of the tub -it's really big so very tricky to get this looking right aesthetically. We can probably all agree that there are a lot of ugly-ass cedar hot tubs out there with cheesy decks around them. I've been contemplating the space and drawing things out for a few weeks now, with the aim of being as minimal but well functioning as possible. As the saying goes, "form ever follows function", right?! 

Also part of this garden overhaul is replacing the pebbled area with troweled concrete. Going to be blessedly smooth and superb.

Ok. I hope this cursory explanation of what I hope to accomplish isn't frustrating. Can't wait to get this job started. A lot of detail to work out first.