Reporting from Piazza Aguilar

It's a beautiful 81 degrees here in Oakland and I wanted to try and compose (and send) my first post from "Piazza Aguilar".

It has always been more enjoyable for me to be outside in nature and now I have the laptop out here in our "new" 2nd patio area.

You might recall the urbanite project from a few weeks back.  Well, since then I tried a few different ways to work with the left over slabs I cut to make room for our new tree.  Andrea talked about it a bit more and we decided we would add more slab pieces until it "connected" with the main patio area.  I finally was able to move and install most of it in "Piazza Aguilar", an area directly across from the "Carnegie" brick area I did last year around this time.

This urbanite patio is a mixture of old, leftover bricks, cut slabs of old concrete with all the cracks and seams filled with smooth stones and sand.  It looks a bit "harlequin-ish" but it seems to suit our backyard. Actually, it blends in real well with the concrete that remains and the surrounding old brick flower planters.  Again, we thought it best to install hard flooring this way since we live in earthquake country and trying for the "perfect" cement patio just wouldn't be realistic.  Plus we save money by not having to hire anybody to haul away this stuff.

Oh, and btw, I built a whole new fence!  A nice 30 foot long dog-eared fence was installed over 4 days replacing the possibly 50 year old redwood fence that was falling apart.  I did save a few good boards and they now make a nice table to hold the potted plants in our 2nd patio we call "Piazza Aguilar".

What I like about this new area is that it is a very private spot in the back and a great vantage point to watch the birds fight in the bird feeder (yes, they DO fight!)

Our secure wireless signal works great out here too!