Matt and I did finish the fire pit last weekend. Arlene and I went back to Gagne’s, the stone yard, first thing in the morning and got another bag of mortar (which we ended up not using), six more fire bricks, and another bag of concrete mix. Matt sent Anne back to the hardware store right after lunch for yet another bag of concrete mix. And that was enough, finally.
One more thing was how to get to the fire pit. It’s up above a retaining wall made of a pile of rocks, and we had been walking down past the end of the retaining wall, or either going up between a garden area and the near end of the retaining wall. Neither was really convenient. Matt had his eye on some big pieces of quarried granite that were on the far side of the driveway, evidently left over from building the retaining wall next to the driveway. We found the one rock at the bottom of the fire pit retaining wall that was most like a step, hauled three of those big granite blocks over, and placed them on the slope to form a rough stairway. For a finishing touch we put a couple of big round rocks at the top of the steps on the sides, to make it clearer where they were.
I have pictures around here somewhere…