Gardening #3: Low Budget Patio

Its official: Spring is in full swing and there must be something like "vernal spores" in my bloodstream that have been lying dormant all winter. I think they are waking up and activating the part of my brain that has an evolutionary link to my beagle: I just want to dig.

Our backyard is rather large, but there is really nowhere formal to sit and barbecue or listen to the birds. So, I'm building a patio. I have no money to spend on it, so I'm going to scrounge building materials. But first, the excavation.

I would have put Maisy to work on the job, but she wouldn't follow my guidelines and I was worried it might encourage future unsolicited digging in the garden. Her trench, however, was a work to be admired by anyone with Spring Fever-dig-o-mania:

With inspiration from the dogs, I got to work. After some huffing and puffing and back-strained shoveling, the result is below with a few of the pavers I got from my neighbor.

Since this is a low budget operation, I'm using whatever I can find around the yard as patio material. I have a collection of random flat rocks that I threw in around the pavers.


There is also sand from an old sandbox I made for the dogs last year (a.k.a. Kitty's litter box) that is being used for packing between stones. The dogs seem to like this use of the sand just fine too:


I'm still scrounging for flagstones and sand to finish this up. I'm using our local Free Cycle site to request materials. If that doesn't pan out, I might have to resort to roving the neighborhood under the cover of darknss to liberate abandoned piles of flat stone (neighbors beware).