Time to catch my breath

Took my final on Thursday. It did not go well.  The gold lining (its better than silver) is that the semester is over and since none of the available summer classes are useful to me I will have 3 whole months of "vacation."  Now my job and family obligations will be the only things dividing my time into this neatly managed chaos I call my life.  Wasting none of this precious time my loving slave driver of a wife is whipping me back into action on the backyard adventure.  The scope has expanded a little to also include repainting the exterior of our home since it well overdue.  Luckily she is a kind mistress and isn't asking me to do any of it.  The painters start early Monday morning and expect to be finished that day.
My good friend Erik, who is an architect and has a focus in landscape architecture, fixed my plan and has created a nice design that I will be following pretty closely.  He had some excellent input for my plant choices and pergola and designed a structure that would meet my shade needs. 
We will be making a big push in the next few weeks to get most of the major elements completed (irrigation, trees, lawn, major shrubs).