Landscaping - Double Edge Sword

Here's the backyard with the patio, but before the other work.

Here's the trenches, which our landscaper swears it took an act of congress to dig. Why we pay him the big bucks, I wasn't about to dig trenches with those rocks... keep digging men.

Here is the edge of our beautiful patio with our nice big Red Sunset Maple-
For anyone that has done landscaping- the reason it's a two edged sword is that we are very excited to get it in, but it is either a whole lot of work, or a whole lot of money- or in our case a little of both- and a whole lot of waiting too... especially now that we have our grand master plan and have to wait to finish it- it's going to kill me to wait for plants. Now if it would just stop raining so we can finish what we are doing for now...