Day 495: The miracle of the sprinklers
Jul. 23rd, 2021 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeJ's yard has a sprinkler system, though when he got the house there were no instructions on operating it, beyond a booklet that listed the four "zones" on the cover. We didn't know how to turn it off in the fall and on in the late spring, as one surely would normally do, though I think J. must have flipped the switch in the garage before winter. And then, after two years, the sprinklers just stopped working altogether. I tried calling a sprinkler repair company, but their message said they were too busy, or some such, and I gave up. For a couple years, J. kept up the watering to some extent with a manual sprinkler, but once the lawn isn't getting regular water it's much easier for dandelions to take hold, and they've really gotten out of hand, especially as he barely watered it last year and I don't think has done it at all this year, except for hand-watering the crocosmias one day when they were looking peaked. (They look mostly dead now.) The lawn is so dry that even the dandelion plants are crisp and crunchy, and the flowerbeds look awful.
As part of clean-up-the-yards project we're doing this year, I called a different company online, one with good reviews, and today was the day. Their representative, Justin, showed up promptly and I showed him where the known sprinkler heads were, and the controls in the garage, and professed our ignorance of everything else. Justin was kind and supportive, and quickly found the master controls out in the gravel strip next to J's paved driveway. Master controls! We had assumed they were for the water system more generally, but no, they were just for the sprinkler system, and... they had been turned off.
My memory flashed back about four years. One day our neighbor Mercy's plumbing had run amok, and some old white guy was trying to help, and in the process he managed to shut off the water to J's house. He may have turned mine off too, now that I think of it - he was just turning off all the water he could manage to turn off. And I bet he turned off J's sprinkler system too, never bothering to tell us what he'd done.
Today, it was something like a miracle - each of the sprinkler heads throughout the yard bloomed back into life, one zone following the next. Justin repaired one head that was spraying water all about, and set up the system to run around 4 a.m., and taught me how it works. He also gave me the business card for a friend of his who can "clean up" the garden thoroughly, then Justin can return and make sure each head is working properly and perhaps reposition some that are too close to the fence.
This felt like a major achievement!
Other things for today: We read outside once J's work day was done, and we watched Ferngully as this week's Friday evening streamed movie, and we went on a walk. Still great weather.
* Mercy is from southern India, and most of her visitors are family members, so this one white guy stands out. I imagine he's a friend from her church.
As part of clean-up-the-yards project we're doing this year, I called a different company online, one with good reviews, and today was the day. Their representative, Justin, showed up promptly and I showed him where the known sprinkler heads were, and the controls in the garage, and professed our ignorance of everything else. Justin was kind and supportive, and quickly found the master controls out in the gravel strip next to J's paved driveway. Master controls! We had assumed they were for the water system more generally, but no, they were just for the sprinkler system, and... they had been turned off.
My memory flashed back about four years. One day our neighbor Mercy's plumbing had run amok, and some old white guy was trying to help, and in the process he managed to shut off the water to J's house. He may have turned mine off too, now that I think of it - he was just turning off all the water he could manage to turn off. And I bet he turned off J's sprinkler system too, never bothering to tell us what he'd done.
Today, it was something like a miracle - each of the sprinkler heads throughout the yard bloomed back into life, one zone following the next. Justin repaired one head that was spraying water all about, and set up the system to run around 4 a.m., and taught me how it works. He also gave me the business card for a friend of his who can "clean up" the garden thoroughly, then Justin can return and make sure each head is working properly and perhaps reposition some that are too close to the fence.
This felt like a major achievement!
Other things for today: We read outside once J's work day was done, and we watched Ferngully as this week's Friday evening streamed movie, and we went on a walk. Still great weather.
* Mercy is from southern India, and most of her visitors are family members, so this one white guy stands out. I imagine he's a friend from her church.