I can see that "remove a half block" working on the flat, and on a south facing wall.
I'm not mentioning it to my wife though......;-)
Wife and I installed the patio together about 30 years ago.
It's just the 16x8 concrete rectangles. We put them in on an angle. Over the years, they held up pretty well, except I planted some giant reed grass near it, and one year it spread under the patio and lifted and broke a couple dozen blocks.
One of the blocks cracked in half and I saw it made a neat little diamond shaped hole in the pattern. So I trimmed up several of the broken pieces to be 8x8 and that was that. Some years we put flowers in there. Others hot peppers.
We're re-doing the area now, because once again the giant reed grass poked into it and swallowed a butterfly bush and moved more blocks. A lot of stones to re-level and power wash the whole thing. New lighting, flower pots, hanging baskets, etc...
So I used my forks to dig out the reed grass and transplant it outside of the fence, move a rotted 8x8, and bring in the giant clam shell that's been in our family for 75 years to be made into a water feature. This is what the area looked like several weeks ago.
Rotted 30 year old 8x8 set to the side.
Lots of dirt where the reed grass was dug out.
Lots of patio blocks out of place due to ground hog last fall (he was encouraged to leave

).
Giant clamshell waiting for some TLC.
Love the articulation of my little machine.

Made it very easy to fork out that 8x8 and get that shell in there.
After it's all redone I'll post some pictures. It's a mess right now.
