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With brightly painted furniture, shards of ceramic tile embedded in the patio floor, ribbons fluttering in the breeze and lots of ersatz Mexican folk art, the patio of Susan Dollar and Scott Sanders resembles a colorful cantina where it’s margarita o’clock all day, every day.

Susan Dollar has installed and painted many of the Mexico-inspired accents on her patio in Boerne.

While some of the patio decor was shipped from Mexico, other pieces, like the wood dining table that Susan painted, came from no further than World Market.

Susan Dollar painted this chair, which her husband Scott Sanders constructed.

With brightly painted furniture, shards of ceramic tile embedded in the patio floor, ribbons fluttering in the breeze and lots of ersatz Mexican folk art, the patio of Susan Dollar and Scott Sanders resembles a colorful cantina where it’s margarita o’clock all day, every day.

“Nobody out here does Fiesta,” Susan Dollar said of the small enclave of only 16 houses in Boerne where she lives with her husband Scott Sanders. “So that’s my job; I try to do my part.”

Susan Dollar used ceramic shards to add interest to the floor of her patio in Boerne.

Susan Dollar holds ceramic shards the she used to decorate the floor of her patio in Boerne. It has many Mexico-inspired accents.

Susan Dollar painted the gardening cabinet built for her by her husband Scott Sanders.

A parrot made from an old tire was purchased at the King William Fair.

BOERNE — Susan Dollar wasn’t born in San Antonio, but her love of the city’s Hispanic culture prompted her to get here as quickly as she could — and to express that love while redecorating her backyard patio. With brightly painted furniture, shards of ceramic tile embedded in the patio floor, ribbons fluttering in the breeze and lots of ersatz Mexican folk art, the small patio resembles a colorful cantina where it’s margarita o’clock all day, every day.

“Nobody in my neighborhood does Fiesta,” she said of the small enclave of only 16 houses in Boerne where she lives with her husband Scott Sanders. “So that’s my job. I try to do my part to make things a party.”

Not all the neighbors love the look.

“Some of the neighbors think the yard’s a bit overdone, but Susan doesn’t care what anything thinks,” said Lois Aaronson, a friend and neighbor. “But when she ties the ribbons, hangs the banners and strings up the lights we all know it’s Fiesta.”

With brightly painted furniture, shards of ceramic tile embedded in the patio floor, ribbons fluttering in the breeze and lots of ersatz Mexican folk art, the patio of Susan Dollar and Scott Sanders resembles a colorful cantina where it’s margarita o’clock all day, every day.vvvvvvv

Dollar, who grew up in Dumas north of Amarillo, said that she and Sanders have traveled extensively throughout Mexico and wanted to bring a little of that Mexican spirit home with them.

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“We’ve had such good trips there and such good memories,” said Dollar, 62, a retired UT Health Science Center administrator. “The patio is my happy place.”

The patio is enclosed by a low wall topped with metal fencing and cascades of native plants and blooming flowers that attract all sorts of pollinators. When Dollar and Sanders moved into the house in 2013, the drab patio area was little more than several plain concrete slabs with rotting wood slats between them and a few areas of dirt where some scraggly plants were desperately hanging on.

“It was butt-ugly,” Dollar said.

They initially considered pulling up the concrete squares and starting from scratch, but decided that was too big a job. Instead, she added some potted plants and painted the concrete crimson a warm terra cotta for color.

Susan Dollar wears sandals that match the ceramic shard trim she installed in her backyard patio.

Then during the pandemic, she had the idea of creating tile mosaics in between the squares of concrete. “I’ve always admired Mexican tile work and how they even make use of broken tile, and I wanted to do something along those lines.”

She removed the wood slats, filled in the space with 180 pounds of concrete and embedded shards of multicolored ceramic tile, which she was happy to learn Amazon sells pre-broken. The result is a puzzlelike kaleidoscope of shapes and sizes.

While a few pieces of the patio decor were shipped from Mexico, most, like the multicolored wood dining table that Susan painted, came from no further away than World Market. “Painting that table and the other furniture helped clear my mind and keep me focused,” she said. “My other passion is politics, and you can only take so much of that. So I needed the creative outlet.”

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Susan Dollar painted the gardening cabinet built for her by her husband Scott Sanders.

Nearby is a garden workbench that Sanders built for her and that she painted. It has a metal shelf for repotting plants, a small shelf above for displaying greenery and a closed cabinet storage space below.

“I bought the wood from Home Depot and designed it myself,” he said. “I also made one of the Adirondack chairs.”

There are plenty of other knickknacks and tchotchkes sprinkled throughout the patio area, including whirligigs and metal wall art, a toucan made from an old tire they bought at the King William Fair and a small flowerpot made from a pockmarked tea kettle that has an interesting history.

“Growing up we spent summers in Colorado and my brother and I used it for target practice,” she said. At least now it has great drainage.

Thanks to her adult children, Dollar also has an ever-growing collection of kitschy metal yard art, including a rooster, a roadrunner and a cactus. “I get gifted with yard art whenever there’s a birthday or other gift-giving event,” she said, adding with raised eyebrows, “but there can be too much of a good thing.”

The yard is also filled with native, mostly pollinator-friendly plants, such as a coral bell that puts out a lovely red flowers, Texas hibiscus, nandina, Asian jasmine and a decorative metal tower holding a number of small ceramic pots she made that hold succulents.

She even grows a passion flower vine whose invasiveness she forgives because it attracts the gulf fritillary butterfly, which lays its eggs on the plant so the larva can feed on the foliage. She also puts out small containers of water mixed with simple syrup to help provide these pollinators with needed energy.

“I do what I can to help the butterflies and the bees,” she said. Because they also like a good Fiesta, and they add to the vista.

“We eat out here all the time when the weather’s nice,” she said. “The patio faces west, so we have two big umbrellas to block the sun. It feels almost like we’re back in Mexico.”

rmarini@express-news.net | Twitter: @RichardMarini

Richard A. Marini is a features reporter for the San Antonio Express-News where he's previously been an editor and columnist. The Association of Food Journalists once awarded him Best Food Columnist. He has freelanced for American Archaeology, Cooking Light and many other publications. Reader's Digest once sent him to Alaska for a week. He came back.