Backyard Phases

So our house sat empty for two years before we bought and moved into it.  Before that, the family living here had fallen under very difficult times financially as well as the health of their daughter.  Our backyard has three parts.  One that's flat with grass, one that is nothing but a tall hillside with mulch, trees and flowers and one that's up at the top of the hillside.  It's flat up top covered in trees, vines, piles of leaves, thorns, anthills trash, old toys that were left and other things we haven't even discovered yet.  This will be an on-going clean up project that will not end in the near future.  We have been able to collect a lot of the dead trees and brush and pile it up.  We've begun the back breaking work of pulling the vines that cover the entire ground and wind up the trees, racking the three season's of leaves and building stone steps from the bottom of the hill up.  I think we've come a long way already this spring.  We are going to get a slide that will be laid down alongside the steps on the hillside for a "fun" factor for the kids.  It will be a wonderful backyard to enjoy for years to come once we get past the "clean-up" phase.  We have plans for garden boxes at some point as we loved having those in our last house.