As usual, you people spoil me with compliments! Thank you. What I call "the first sunken garden", since it was the first one I made, and got the new wall this summer, has a stone floor; and in the middle there is a circular bed surrounded by rocks that spills over with ivy. Lots of ivy and has another small statue of "my lady". She's very old now and has a seashell on her forehead! ha. There is also a large serviceberry shrub growing at one end (you can see a limb of it in the photo and which I've cut off since the photo was taken). There are four entrances with stone steps of two or three risers, but the entire area is much smaller than it looks in the photo. In the Garden Statuary and Ornaments forum on GW, someone posted some months ago about buying a statue of Daphne for their garden. I found a pic of the statue she bought and posted it there but since have deleted it.

I was looking for a table just like you describe a few years back and I looked all over just as you have. I have a Lyons-Shaw 48" white wrought iron table that I bought in 1981 and I was using that as my inspiration. I remembered when I purchased the 48" that they also had a smaller one with the soda fountain style chair. One day DH & I were at an antique store & there it was! :) Now we see them every where,(antique stores). Don't give up.

Very, very unlikely that you have any dangerous snakes in your yard. In fact, it was probably a garter snake, sometimes called a "garden snake" and they just eat mostly big bugs from your garden and are very scared of you and will slither away if given the slightest opportunity. The stones and bricks probably attract just as many snakes as any plants. You don't need to have a yard devoid of landscaping or plants to avoid snakes. Your cheapest and easiest option for a small patio are large (12 inch and sometimes you can even find bigger ones) cement pavers. They cost a couple of bucks each, and you don't need that many. There are many ways to put in a patio like that, but the best way is to dig down, put a layer of special rough gravel, tamp it down, fill with pavers and then sweep sand over it between the cracks. You could do it in one weekend. Directions can be found in any good landscaping book at the library or just google "cement paver patio." You can edge it with wood if you like. Then put out some cheap colorful plastic planters with colorful flowers, like your grandkids drew. And if it were me, I'd scour the second hand and garage sale and garden stores for fun metal or wood things to hang on the fence. I found a metal sun sculpture with bells on it in the trash one time, for example. Mulch the rest with good cedar mulch and call it a day, that way you won't have to mow. Or do grass for the rest, and use a weed whacker like I did in my tiny urban "lawn."

You could post pictures for better advice