Hail !?!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen hail before. Just never this much, this fast. On the plus side, the pots on the patio are starting to look pretty good. 
I can smile because it won’t do much to the annuals, and the sun is already shining again. The cherries might be toast though. We’ll have to wait and see.
Added - the cherries look like they’ll be okay… as long as we can protect them from the birds!
Such weird weather all over the country lately. But I must say, your tile work is lovely.
Thank you - we put it down ourselves. It was my uncles idea (he sold us end of lot tiles at $1/sq ft, telling us how to do it, and making sure we understood he wasn’t going to do it. We did 500 sq ft for materials cost of $700. It would have cost us about $10/sq ft to have someone do it (yes, $5000). It was a truly hot summer and my mother and I would get up at 6am so we could work until about 10am. After that the concrete was too hot and the quick set would start to set too fast. Then I would go inside and do my work (I worked at home then), hoping that it would be too hot at night to work on it.
It turned out beautifully, although there are a few tiles that haven’t weathered as well as others, and I think I might need to chip them out and replace them. I’m really trying to avoid that… maybe next year!
The patio is lovely! What I envisioned when we had ours built, only our budget didn’t allow it, and we didn’t have time at the time. I can’t imagine the endless hours of work - it truly looks like a labor of love.
I’m trying to remember, but I think it worked out to 70 hours of work total (x2 people). We did about 3 hours every day for a number of weeks, although I seem to remember that it felt like it took forever.