Even More Pain

Speaking of immigration reform, today I dug 20 feet of trench in order to move two sprinkler heads out from behind the pine trees. My HOA requires me to have a minimum number of pine trees of the Blue Spruce variety, so napalm was out of the question.

The digging was a major pain, as the sprinkler heads were literally underneath the trees, and these trees turn out to be quite pokey in the needle department. I had to tie the lower branches back in order to get in there, and even so, I was unable to swing the pick at all and had a hard time just getting a shovel in there. It took about three hours to dig out the old heads and trench to the new locations.

The Mrs., ever the supportive wife, commented on the work:

The Mrs.: "I don't understand why you didn't just cap off the sprinklers."

Me, CherkyB: "Then the grass in front of the trees would die."

The Mrs.: "No. I mean cap off the sprinklers in the old locations, and then just dig holes in the new locations."

Me, CherkyB: "Huh?"

The Mrs.: "I don't see why you wasted time trenching when you could have just capped them off and dug holes in the new spots."

Me, CherkyB: "How would I connect them to the water?"

The Mrs.: "From the pipe in the new holes."

Me, CherkyB: "But the pipe is at the old location! That's how they got water. They run the pipes to the sprinklers, not just at some random spots around the yard. I needed the trenches to bring the pipe to the new spots."

The Mrs.: "Ohhhhhhh...I get it. I thought you were just wasting time."

Then, of course, I needed to buy the supplies to connect up the new locations to the supply. This involved getting some 1" compression fittings, some hose clamps, and some more 1" flex pipe. See, I ruined the remainder of my old spool of 1" flex pipe by parking the tractor too close to it, causing it to melt when it got too hot from the muffler.

Boom! Muffler.

I decided to take MaxieC with me, cuz he was hanging out getting under foot while I was digging. MaxieC insisted we go to Ace Hardware to try to get the stuff, even though I assured him the wouldn't have the pipe. He 'splained to me he wanted the free popcorn. Well, when we got there, they were out of popcorn, and the didn't have the pipe, and they only had about half the fittings I needed. So it was off to Lowe's.

Seemingly an hour later, we were back home, and I went to start the install.

Argh!!!!

MaxieC: "Mommy, we're going back to Ace."

The Mrs.: "Why?"

MaxieC: "Cuz Mr. Stoopidhead forgot to get the very first part he needed."

HannahC had to come along this time, too, as she had finished her schoolwork. Ace had fresh popcorn, so it was worth the trip.

Everything went together quite without incident, and MaxieC and I filled in the trenches and packed them down. I didn't worry much about cosmetics, as next weekend we'll be covering the area under the trees with landscape fabric and then shredded redwood bark mulch.

I'm kinda sleepy.