Three Hundred Feet, MacGyver Edition

What do you do if you’ve spontaneously—some might say rashly—purchased ALL THE THINGS necessary to put in a “do-it-yourself” home irrigation system for your flowerbeds, and then realized half way thru that the “doing it yourself” part requires more grip-and-shove strength than you possess?

I believe I have already established that I am puny when it comes to upper body strength. Not puny enough that you should worry about me in the event of a zombie apocalypse---trust me, I’m strong enough to fight zombies—but puny enough that people often feel obliged to come lift heavy things for me. Who knew I was too puny to shove one little double-ended joiner thingy into a tiny little ¼” line thingy, far enough so that it wouldn’t leak? IT DID NOT LOOK THAT DIFFICULT WHEN I SAW IT DONE.

It’s often been said—and one more than one occasion it’s been said TO me---that you give the laziest person the hardest job and they will find the easiest way to do it. One could argue—and on more than one occasion I HAVE—that the lazy person in question is actually a SMART person for figuring out how to simplify the problem at hand. My problem currently was that the ¼” plastic water line was tougher than I was. I needed to soften it up...Cue hot pink embossing gun.

For those of you that didn’t spend the better part of this millennium crafting I’ll just explain an embossing gun this way: it works exactly like a heat tool/paint stripper, but it’s marketed to crafters—mostly women—comes in hot pink, and probably costs more than your gray, old, boring Black & Decker one. I figured out that a three second blast with my hot pink embossing gun would warm up the ¼” line enough that that joiner thingies would slip right in.

Alas, most of my flowerbeds are not located near my craft room.

Thankfully, my garage is full of 100 ft lengths of heavy-duty orange extension cord. Best of all, the hot pink and the orange looked really good together. Now if you’d just fill the trenches in for me, you could call me Tom Sawyer-MacGyver, and we could call this project D-O-N-E.

300 Feet

If you were to have wandered into my backyard last Sunday, you might have wondered just what it was I was doing with three hundred feet of heavy-duty orange extension cord and a hot pink embossing gun. And I would have been happy to explain it to you, right after I Tom Sawyered you into helping me.

It was brought to my attention earlier this summer—right around the time I realized I had agreed to go away on vacation for a week in July with giving nary a thought to how I would keep my flowers alive in the summer heat—side note: how cute was it I thought summer would have heat/sunshine? Anyway, back to the point: I realized I needed an irrigation system to water in my absence.

Home improvement stores carry lots of really nifty home irrigation stuff for the do-it-yourselfer. All of it looks simple, and non-threatening, and there are so many cool little add-ons and accessories---look! ¼” baby soaker hose! Adjustable mini sprinkler heads that spray in a 180* pattern! 90 degrees! 360! Color-coded button drippers! In-line drippers! BUY ALL THE THINGS!!

So, I bought all the things. And some more things. And went back for more of the elbow things and the t-joint things and it turns out I probably should have bought more of the end-cap thingies, because things have to END...

Anyway, its been fun and “not that hard”—especially because I had help with the digging the trench part. Spoiler alert: By help, I mean I did not dig the trench.

The one part that turned out to be more difficult than it looked was the “joining the pieces” part. I saw it done—you just take the poker-thingy and poke a hole in the ½” pipe thingy, then stick the tiny, little joiner-double-ended thingy into the hole you just poked, and into the 1/4” line thingy and then attach that line to whatever button dripper or sprayer you’ve selected, and also attach a stick-it-in-the-ground-sticker thingy and, voila! It didn’t look that hard.

And it wasn’t---IF you have the type of hand strength where you crack walnuts with just a little squeeze AND NO NUT CRACKER. Second spoiler alert: I buy nuts already cracked.

Enter the hot pink embossing gun.

Who Knew?

I was all prepared to write a long rant where I complained—in a highly entertaining way, of course—about “The Weekend Deluge That Flattened My Petunias,” followed by a shorter soliloquy on “The Plague of Slugs and Grasshoppers, Nibbling My Flowers,” but then this happened:

 I woke up to a beautifully sunny day, and—tea cup in hand, slug poking stick in the other-- strolled out to my gardens. There were the Stargazer lilies I planted for the first Sume wedding, in full, glorious bloom. The lilies that I hadn’t seen bloom since that time, the lilies that every summer since have been turned into elk chow. Lilies that I have only enjoyed a seeing only bloom or two before they were destroyed by rampaging elk. And oh, let me tell you, they smell divine! The lilies, of course, not the elk. Elk stink.

I came back into my house, already re-writing in my head, singing the praises of having a fence! Who knew that lilies could have that many blooms per stalk? Who knew a fence could be that effective? Ok, so maybe everybody that already had a fence knew the answers to both of those questions, but now I know! I will tell everyone! I shall be come a fence evangelist, and travel about the county preaching the Good News and Many Benefits of Fence Having! I shall convert the masses! Fence building will become all the rage, everyone will have one! Elk will become so discouraged that they will swear off domesticated plant eating and eat only dandelions and scotch broom from now on! Anything is now, not only possible, but probable!

Editor’s Note: The odds are currently two to one that Sue’s giddy optimism will last through the first three molehills that appear in her yard. Place your wagers today.

40th Class Reunion

I see all of US
and in an instant
I am 18 again and
full of sass and stars
and possibilities...

Oh, the possibilities----the endless highway, stretching out before us in the dark, driving fast, past what our headlights could fully illuminate. Sometimes, illumination be damned, we will drive by the light of the stars and the fire of the kisses and the laughter that fuel us.

We are 18,
and invincible,
and magic.

There is much we have yet to learn. There is a big wide world out there with our names on it and all we have yet to become is out there waiting. The good, the bad, The things that will batter and bruise us, The things that will make our hearts fill
---so full--
to hold more
than we could ever imagine at 18...
Oh, the possibilities!

What a gift it all is---maybe, especially,
this second time around
to be 18 again
if only for this day
with all of you...

Alert Level Orange

WARNING: we have now reached Level Orange of the Zucchini Defense system. I apologize for not alerting you last week to Level Yellow, but to be honest the whole zucchini season kind of snuck up on me. Thankfully, we are not yet at Level Red—but it’s never too early to lock your car doors and to avoid making eye contact with your gardening neighbors.

At this point in the season, it’s easy to forget what a menace zucchini can be. I, myself, during level Yellow, nearly got sucked in to accepting multiple zucchinis from the Kelly Garden.

It all started innocuously enough. I was visiting the Kelly garden, admiring all the blooming growth and enjoying a post garden-tour cup of tea when the trouble started. Tim came up on the back deck, arms laden with baby zucchini—those oft fabled, rarely seen teeny tiny zucchini, you know the ones I mean, zucchini smaller than a kayak, zucchini about the size of a medium cucumber; the kind of zucchini that seems manageable, fresh and delicious. Then he returned with some actual cucumbers and added them to now expanding pile of perfect produce.

I agreed to accept one zucchini and one cucumber. Which is how most cautionary tales start, just one little one, what could it possibly hurt? Like all good pushers of produce, Tim offered me more. I politely declined. He then offered to put my one zucchini and one cucumber in a bag for me and I nearly fell for it.

WHATEVER YOU DO---DO NOT ACCEPT PRODUCE THAT HAS BEEN PRE-BAGGED. Now, I’m not saying Tim would have been overwhelmed by generosity or would intentionally spam my bag with extra zucchini, all I’m saying is that when I return home and carry the bag into my house...well, the bag would most likely include more than one baby zucchini and one medium cucumber. It’s entirely possible that the bagged zucchini would have begun, by some dark magic, to multiply. And once I innocently carry the bag over my threshold...I shudder to think of the outcome.

Zucchini bread does go really well with tea, though.