patio | Great Stems

Awhile back we laid flagstone to cover our boring old concrete front porch and were quite delighted with the results. This isn’t a great view of the front, but see that porch? <Puffs out chest> We did that!

At the same time, we began the same process to cover up the old, ugly, cracked concrete slab that served as our back patio, but we soon became hindered by time, time, time, and other obstacles. Basically, life got in the way — nevermind the fact that laying flagstone when you’re no spring chicken makes you much older very quickly.

So finally, we decided to bite the bullet and hired someone to finish the job. It was money well spent, and the crew completed it in a day. After a day or so, we were allowed to let the dogs into the backyard, so here are Grover and Sheba modeling on the new flagstone patio.

I’m not going to give you the full view because we have so much cleaning up to do around it. The patio looks great, but the yard is u-g-l-y ugly. The dogs are cute!

Poor Sheba is going to have her doghouse moved to some hidden corner of the yard until it can be given away. She only uses it if she’s caught outside in the rain and Mom’s a slowpoke letting her back in. It looked fine with the ugly concrete slab — because who cared at that point — but it does not flatter our gorgeous new patio!

Ah well, guess it means she’ll get spoiled even more.

We’ve been busy with home improvement projects, seemingly nonstop since spring began. In April we finally covered our back porch with some shade-giving sails. To do something fancier was pretty pricey, so we opted for these fun and not-so-common shade sails. Here Grover distracts Michael from his hole digging.

What we thought was supposed to be relatively quick turned out to be an all-day process — starting with the holes. Stepan came over to help hold the posts, but as it turns out he also got to help dig through bedrock, lift 12-foot cedar posts, climb ladders, place plumb lines, mix and pour cement, etc. Hey, at least we fed him!

Of course, rain and hail threatened over the next few days, so we didn’t actually set up the shade sails until days after the cement cured. The dogs began laying in the shade before the first sail actually got completely hung up.

But we are very, very happy with the shade sails. They add shade when it counts but also allow enough morning sun to grow plants around the posts and in containers on the porch.

I already have crossvine growing up the posts — I’ll post pictures of the lovely tangerine flowers sometime later. You can tell by the photo that painting is soon to be in our future!

Category Archives: patio

Dogs Show Off New Patio

Backtracking — The Shade Sails, April ’09