Patios! (Yes, plural!)

A note: I wrote this on 8/26/23. It is now 9/5/23. My parents came to visit summer of '21. I have a bit of a blog backlog, it turns out. Stay tuned for more updates!

Last summer, my parents came to visit. Before they came, they asked me what project I had for them to do while they were here. I didn't have a project for them, but I did have a list of small projects that needed doing. They were completely uninterested in doing any of my small projects. Instead, they said, "What if we put in a patio?" When your parents tell you they want to put a patio in for you, and it will be your birthday and Christmas presents, and they're going to do all the work - you say, "thank you!"

A quick reminder: when I bought my house, this is what the back yard looked like:

It's not a great shot (there's a tree in the way!), but you can sort of see a big patch of sand off the kitchen, and the narrowest little garden bed stretching out along the fence. When I added the sliding door off my bedroom, the sad state of the yard felt a bit more pressing, but I really wasn't planning on dealing with it any time soon. Mom and dad's offer was perfectly timed. 

I wasn't terribly present as they worked - I was working - so I'm not totally sure all the steps they took! However, I was there when we picked up the first batch of flagstones. My parents, who were here on vacation, were also spending a few weeks at Ghost Ranch. While there, they stumbled across a bunch of flagstones from a retaining wall that had washed out in the big flood a few years ago. They asked the director if they could take them, and he said yes! So half to two-thirds of my flagstones come from Ghost Ranch, which feels really special.

Here's the starting phase:

 

Dad and mom (and Uncle Tom!) got the ground as flat as they could, and added a base of gravel and sand. Dad and Tom began placing the pavers in the ground. While they did that, mom pulled all the bricks from the retaining wall and HUGELY expanded the raised garden. She probably tripled the raised bed space!

 

Phin seemed fairly unphased by it all, and despite flagstone being even harder than the gravel he had eschewed, quickly found it a good napping place. 

 

Off that patio, you can see steps leading over to my room - the space that dad called 'the bonus patio'. The first patio went faster than expected, and I had a pile of bricks that use to sit along the base of the house, so dad and Tom put in a second patio! There was an old railroad tie in the yard, and so they cut it down to make the stoop wider. Then they placed the bricks.

By the time they left, here's what the yard looked like:

Of course, that was last summer. Once I had patios in the yard, getting some plantings going felt a little more urgent - and so did patio furniture. The first step was two little lavender plants. The one on the left is twice blooming and the one on the right is a more traditional lavender.