As promised, here are some pictures of my backyard remodel. Starting in the top right corner, this is looking in from the gate on the side of my house. I'm removing the decorative rock that can be seen at the bottom of the frame.

An aside, the blue garbage can is the collaborative idea Miguel and I had for composting our backyard and kitchen byproducts - he has one too. We drilled holes 360 degrees round the can for good air ventilation and I used the pitch fork seen leaning against the wall to stir the compost. Currently, my bin is about half full, but that half is a rich 3/4+ decomposed blackened organic mess. It's an awe-inspiring and sobering thing to behold. Come fall bed prep - probably about mid to late August I wager - I'll spread as much as 3" of compost on the surface of each bed, starting with the new bed, seen in the top right corner pic, immediately right of the hexagonal stepping stones. The new bed because I actually used native + store bought soil so it needs to be conditioned more before it can compete with the raised bed soil, which was 100% store bought. Bing!

The top right pic, in addition to a sneak peak of the newest garden, is looking from just to side of the compost can, against the side wall, back toward the patio proper. These stepping stones were put in this spring because I intended to make each side of them a garden bed. This was an ok theory, but I didn't properly calculate the lack of sun on the left hand side (based on the perspective of the top right pic). The only seedling I planted there struggled mightily until I moved it over to the bed on the right hand side. This, along with a far too narrow walking path, was the impetus to extend the patio to the side gate. Based on what you see here, the patio will extended width-wise from the house, just out of the frame on the left, to about the middle of these stepping stones. Length-wise, it will extended from the patio to the side wall, in a direct line, encircling the a/c unit (better seen in the pic at the bottom left), and from wall to house along the path that leads from the gate to where I'm standing in this pic.

It's an ambitious project, but I have some tricks of the trade that I learned after the Hebrew slavian effort to create the first patio. Namely, the foundation of stone patios in an arid climate like the seventh ring of hell, PHX, doesn't need to be as deep or layered as its cousins in a more wet climate, like Seattle for example. My current patio, in this climate, will probably survive the apocalypse and is suitable for driving tanks on... a little more than I really need. This time, I will use a method I didn't discover until after I finished my patio - Portland Cement. This is a cement mixture type stuff and all one needs to do is rototill it into the native soil, put a layer of fine sand on top, roughly 1-2", lay your bricks (which, if done correctly, should translate into laying some pipe with your old lady when she sees how boss the new patio is) and compact the whole thing down while adding more sand to fill the cracks between the bricks. Last thing to do is water the whole thing down to set the bricks and your good to go. It's really quite simple. I mean shit, I did it for Christ's sake and I'm not the most handy of men.

These last pics show the path of the new patio from the other side. The bottom right pic shows how the new patio will envelope the a/c unit and its eventual collision with the side wall just under the tuperware storage containers. The bottom left pic shows the path from side gate to storage containers.

I'm really excited for this patio to be done. I think it is the aesthetic piece missing from my backyard puzzle - the patio will naturally lead your eye into and out of the patio. And as any painter or photographer will tell you, if your eye isn't lead from foreground to background through a picture, then not all of the pic's possible splendor can be captured. Your eye will stop at distracting and competing stimuli before completing its full look-through. The set up of a backyard is no different. The principle perspective point for my yard is where the sliding glass door meets the patio, immediately behind and to the right of the pic on the bottom right. By extending the current patio all the way to the far wall and out to the side gate, one's eye will be lead through all the visual aspects of the yard without getting caught up on anyone thing. Right now, due to the patio abruptly ending midway through the yard, one's eye can't easily continue on from the edge of the patio to the far wall and therefore is displease, at least subliminally, with how the aesthetics of yard are set up.

It's going to be a ball breaker, but I know it will be worth it. I just wish I didn't get around to completing these projects until June, which is when I completed my current patio too. Guess I was too busy planting and enjoying the beautiful weather to do it when it's nice and cool! Wish me luck!