Patio Progress (Extra Pictures Addition)

We've been working in the evenings and got up early on Saturday morning in advance of the threat of thunderstorms and got to work - and the effort paid off in a good deal of patio and landscaping progress!  First up - we planted the side gardens framing the patio.  The left side has porcupine grass, maiden grass, and white and purple coneflowers.  The right side has wax myrtles and knockout rose bushes.  We may have actually overplanted - while everything fits nicely at the moment, all the plants should grow quite a bit so we may end up having to transplant some next spring.  But for now, it looks really nice and well landscaped.  Then we finished building the steps to the patio- a big project and one that we're glad to have done!  We used 12" bullnose pavers on top of wall block, with the 9x9 pavers on the platform.  It came out really well and looks like we planned it from the beginning!  Finally, we built the fire pit/grill.  This came in an incredibly easy to assemble kit - just stack the stones around the ring, apply glue, and let dry.  We were only lookingfor a basic fire pit but this package came with a nice heavy duty grill and a cover that slides open - so we could actually do some barbecuing over it if we wanted.  Our new patio table also showed up yesterday so, although we're still waiting for our chairs, we have our first piece of outdoor furniture to occupy the space.  It's all starting to come together and look finished.  A few more details to go still - our gas grill should be delivered next weekend and will be installed on the left side of the patio and Brian is thinking about building some Adirondack chairs to put on the right side of the table near the fire pit.  We also still need to move the compactor off the patio (currently lurking in the right hand corner) and into the hopefully-soon-to-be-complete garage.  So, there's still work to be done but it's a huge improvement from when we started a month ago!