Both Thursday and Friday were gorgeous spring days, perfect for a mix of yard labors, including continued expansion of the irrigation dripline system and spreading more of the mulch. I squeezed in the second cutting of the yard after supper Saturday and mulched more until it was too dark to see. My tired body each day felt good, though, joyful in the face of these simple pleasures.
On Friday, when we topped out at 85°F here, I finally got around to adjusting the height of several planting bed zone irrigation access points. It seems I never captured any particularly revealing photos of them but one is visible above ground in this photo of Sumner from 2022:
I think I was caught with a limited size option for those line taps at a crucial juncture in the original installation and build, with the idea I’d come back and cut them down to ground level. In the meantime, they’ve stood at attention, capped off and unuseful, waiting for this fix so that I could attach dripline converters and filters to them, to then be ready for laying out drip lines and bubblers and emitters.
Setting up the drip line systems so they could now provide water directly to plants was a lot more tedious than I had anticipated. I’m a novice and newbie, which is one factor, and in an ironic twist for an educational consultant, my efforts suffer because I’m going in without a plan!
To my rescue comes the digitized property maps I worked up a while back. On Saturday, I took measurements, drew out how various elements of the system needed to be cut and connected, and also took advantage of access to sink-side hot water that softens the tubing and makes the joining less difficult. Cutting to measure, assembling either inside or on the tailgate of the truck, and operating with a more defined schematic were key to Saturday’s larger success on the project.
As we march into this spring, I’m so very happy with the lawn sprinklers, and now I’m going to benefit from having irrigation for many of the front planting areas. That includes the concrete planters that belonged to my mother. I followed some ingenious guidance online to configure driplines within them, that then connect to my bedding area watering zone. I don’t want to walk around with a watering can if I’ve gone to all this trouble to create an expansive irrigation set-up.
Once the sun broke through as Saturday morning’s rainy spell passed on, and we warmed up a bit, it really was just an ideal day outside. I deliberately took my breaks in the camp chair on the freshly mowed front lawn because it was an early taste of the weekend rituals of the good weather seasons, when you live across the street from a very popular Italian restaurant and many patrons park in front of the house. Sumner rushes forward to greet them, and most are obliging of his snorting demands for attention. A few folks are regulars, and we’ll chat and catch up for a few minutes either as they come or as they go. The comments people make about the house and the yard can certainly be gratifying. I’m honest with them about how fortunate I feel to have this as my home.
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