Patio Almost Complete!

There's been a lot of progress on the patio project. I was personally out of town for 5 weeks and in that time all of the "legs" of the patio were completed, a gazebo went up and several plants were in. It was a total surprise when I got back. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos to show the many stages the patio was in between the last post and the current post!



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The only progress photo I have before many of the plantings, the compost, the grass seed planting.


Gazebo that came with screening, and although you can't see it, we put a light fixture put in the top of it. The neon fencing is protecting our newly planted grass seed. The blue-green structure in the background is the hot tub area, which was reused from a gazebo a friend was taking down.

Also, a tree in front of the hot tub area and a short bushy tree on the immediate right were free from a guy we got base rock/sand from when we were building the square part of the patio. We think the tall one is some sort of pear tree, maybe decorative, and that the short one is a fig.



The smaller greens on this side were freshly planted.


Transplanted our maple, which hasn't been happy in a container, with a prime spot. The green mosaic ball looks awesome with the red maple and the dark compost color behind it.


There's solar pathway lighting on every leg of the patio (the small brown box-like things).


It'll look awesome when there's some lush grass there!


The original brick path was much thinner and didn't go all the way up to the house, instead there was a section of lame lava rock. We expanded the brick path with a new pattern and got rid of the lava rocks completely! There was a bunch of loose sand still sitting on it.


To celebrate both the patio and the upcoming birthday of Trevor (later this month, of which we'll have a party on the patio), Michelle bought a new grill. The old grill was dying and Home Depot had this one on a very nice sale.

In other news, we had our first rain of the season two nights ago. We haven't been directly watering the grass in the front, because of the drought, so it looks pretty trashy and dead. When I'd wash my car, I'd park it on the grass so that the water gets two uses out of it, though.

We put up the rest of the lava rocks we have (which is way too many) on craigslist and we'll hopefully be rid of that stuff forever!