Behind the trees, the gray line is the gravel drive, curving down to the garage and beyond that is a lovely big pile of woodchips at the edge of the woods. Of course, before anything that I wanted to do could be started, the huge pile of stones left over from construction had to be moved. That took a while and a lot of perspiration. Black plastic perforated drain pipe was installed in the trench to carry water from what would become the upper terrace. This gives you an idea of the soil - good old orange Maryland clay with veins of shale, which are the devil to dig through.
Tree roots lace the entire area.
You can see how we jogged the trench to keep it as far away from the trees as we could. After the trench was backfilled, the posts and beams were erected and that was the end of the second season. The next year, I started building a low stone wall that encloses their bases. The grade falls as it follows the drive down the hill, so the sections of wall are stepped. I'd done some dry stone retaining walls, but this was my first effort at mortared stone work.