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165 The Patios The Main Patio from the very beginning of our time in this house we envisioned a patio right outside the back door. The house has a large back porch that adjoins the living room and a big glass door that walks you right out into the patio. It seemed a natural for people like us: a patio that would be an extension of the house, a view that would bring the outdoors in, a cozy place to entertain or simply to sit. For this idea little discussion was needed, as we were both in sync from the very beginning. There was a sickly mimosa in the dead center of the area destined to be our main patio, and during our first walk through the place, even before we bought it, we had mentally removed that tree. We went into action almost immediately upon moving in to remove the tree and begin to plan the patio. We laid out the dimensions of our idea with rope and some old hoses to get our design juices going. Then the septic work began and tore the entire place to bits. But when the construction was done, and the stairs and other parts had been laid in, we found that we still had a big space for the patio that was now even easier to access and looked like it belonged right where it was. Once again we laid out the dimensions with the rope and hose and swept the soil to form the floor of the patio for the time being. Frankly, we could easily have left it at that. Here, packed down soil turns to adobe pretty quickly, and it wouldn’t have been that hard to keep it firm and in place. But we had other ideas. 166 • A Place All Our Own There were some leftover cut flagstones from Gary’s first stone building project—the raised beds along the entire length of the house—and we used them to define beds around our imaginary patio and the paths that flowed from it. We imagined large, flagstone paving but the budget wouldn’t support that yet, so we lived with the earthen patio and the barely emergent beds for a while. As it happened, this was a good thing, and worked out so well for us that I encourage my students to use this idea in their own conversions or new yards. It takes a while to see if paths are really running where you want them to go. It is helpful to find out that the trees you inherited or planted are really in the right spot, and that the path runs alongside them—not smack into their middle—as they mature. Living with the outline gives definition and shape to a new garden, and you feel like you can live in it and use it right away without a great commitment of time or money. It also makes it much easier to find just the spot for a new plant or a new idea. Most of all, for us it meant we could wait as long as our time and money permitted to finish things off and still have a place to work, plant, and sit in the garden. When the funds had accumulated and it came time to finish off the patio, we returned to the rock vendor for pallets of large, flat flagstone to pave it. Laying a patio is hard work and can only be done by laying out each stone one at a time. This time-consuming hand labor makes Gary’s heart sing, and each of the three patios shows the care and devotion he has taken to get just the right stone in just the right spot. He won’t use a power tool; he barely uses any tools at all for this work, striking and busting the rocks with a small hammer, his feet, or other rocks if they need a bit of sizing. It is an old-fashioned kind of work, and for reasons only he understands, he prefers to take on these kind of projects in the summer, when he can work through the morning, build up a great sweat, and then rest for the afternoon. It undoubtedly removes a lot of the poison that builds up from toiling away with computers and the folks who understand them. I have no such romance or interest in wrestling with stone. My job is to get in the...

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