Patio

   This is our patio that we extended with pavers--not cheap!!  A few years ago we started this, and we didn't stop until we were happy with it, so it took us all summer.

The picture below, with my hubby, is what it looked like before we started.  Lots of monkey grass--at least that's what they called it where I bought it in Louisiana.  I got one pot of it back in 1977, and I have divided it through the years and gave lots of it away, and I still have a ton of it.

Here's the pickup with one load of pavers.  (We must have gone to the lake, because the pontoon is in the driveway; we normally keep it at a storage place when we're not using it.)

We called Erin bright and early one Saturday--She lives just down the street--"come help us unload".  She's a sweetie, and she's always good to help us and we're good to help her.  Pat ourselves on the back.  I love having her down the street.

We also picked up pavers in the SUV.

Unloaded, we began.

We started with a circle of grey pavers in the sand.

My hubby brought them to me and I laid them out using a level and a board.

Next we started filling in using the same method.  The pavers around the edges had to be cut with a grinder.  That was hubby's job--I marked, he cut.

Almost done with the circle; notice the pile of pavers has gone way down in the picture below.  After we finished the circle, we decided to make a couple of paths behind it and a landing for the water hose--more pavers.  We just kept adding on until we were happy.  Then we swept sand into the cracks.

We ended up just about buying the hardware store out of pavers.  We are happy with it now.
Some of the pavers look like this now.  Cool, huh?

The backyard doesn't exactly look like the picture below anymore, because we had a real bad Ice storm that following winter, and the neighbor lost their trees (partly in our yard).  We were without power for 12 days.  It was terrible.  After 6 days of freezing cold we bought a generator, so we had 6 days with a generator.  It was big enough to run the heater, refrigerator, freezer, a few lights, and the aquariums.  When I used the blow dryer, I had to turn off the heat first.  We cooked with a propane burner.  We made it just fine though.  To this day I think about all the power it takes to run our house when I turn something like the blow dryer on.  We had another  ice storm the next winter, but we were only without power 3 days.

Now we don't have any morning shade, and there is an extremely high wood pile next to the fence.