Entering the Patio

We have officially started to clear off the patio this week.  We built a "rock ramp" to get the backhoe onto the back side patio from the front yard.  In order to get it to fit onto the back brick patio, we had to take down a portion of the stone wall.  Even though we had to do it to reach the back portion of the house, this was a hard one for me!!  It's in so many of the old pictures and really created a cozy space.  Now that it's down, I'm okay with it because it's so open and as Roger likes to say, "When I'm a very old man, I may have time to rebuild it for you."  Here's a few pictures of the tear down of the wall.

You can see how we are sorting the debris off on the back patio.  It's hard to tell, but there is gorgeous red brick in a running bond pattern around the perimeter of the patio and herringbone pattern in the center.   Pappy took down the hairy gross poison ivy vine on the back of the house on the old mudroom.  That thing was scary!  There are tons of roots and even trees growing up through the bricks and the wood.  There was even a tree trunk that was growing out of a roof pipe!
The backhoe finally reached the back pile.  We started pulling the huge rocks out of the piles and taking load after load to the temporary dump area.