Patio of sorts...

Here my friends is an eyesore ~ my battle for the summer...

As you can see it is a MESS

We got this MESS with the house ~ LOL

The orange cone is the basement window... the plastic bin has recycled bricks that the hubby and I have been collecting for a few months... the weeds well, they are just that... weeds... oh and the picker bush too!

We are so grateful for our home and love it! Slowly we are making it our own. Our plan to is to concrete this whole section but in the meantime we are using what we have to make an area for our rockers and an area that is less of an eyesore!

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What you are not seeing is the work that we already completed... hard to believe!

On the left hand side near the lattice were two huge arborvitae

We cut the arborvitae down in the spring and it has taken us until today to get the stumps out!

A broken shovel and ax later and it is all gone 

On the right hand side was a picker bush (still one there in the pic) and a small oak tree!

We cleaned out the area near the window and pulled out the picker bush and killed the weeds

Then we laid down newspaper as an under covering weed blocker

Then we added the black ground cover and started laying the stone

Sloped so that the rain will not hit the house and seep into the basement

Not too bad for amateurs!

oops... I forgot to add my cute pillows...

Oh and there is a market umbrella stand in between the chairs too so that I can put it up when it is HOT!

So now our goal is to paint the cellar door and then get a cover for the cellar window and then I  plan to take the concrete that was around the arborvitae and place it sporadically and add some small stone ground cover and potted plants... maybe by August LOL!