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.