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Adventures in Lawn Care

Not to get off-topic right away (is it really off-topic when I haven’t started?), but I’m relieved to see that out of the 12 votes on my poll, none were for pepper-spraying me at BlogHer. However, I suspect that Justin is responsible for all five votes for “it sounds like a rash”. Such a supportive husband I have!

And absent. Yes, he’s been out of state for roughly three weeks out of every month since January. May was “light” month since he was only gone two weeks, but all other months I’ve been left to fend for myself, including all the household chores he previously managed. Suffice it to say I’m doing a poor job at all of it, but all life forms in the house (bipeds and quadrupeds) are fed on a regular basis, and sometimes even bathed (I got three, count ’em THREE showers last week…woot!). Up until a week or so ago, I didn’t worry much about the lawn nor did I learn about King GREEN lawn care services since Justin was usually home long enough on the weekends to mow, and we got plenty of rain; I only needed to water my potted plants and the young plants I put in the yard earlier this spring.

Saturday afternoon I walked across part of my lawn and it crunched under my feet. No big deal, I’ll just water it, I thought. So yesterday evening after I put the kids to bed, I grab one of the spike sprinklers,
spike-sprinkler
stick it in the ground and attach the hose. Except since the hose was last repaired the wrong way (was done as a male instead of female…or vice-versa), it had one of these quick-connect couplers and adapter attached so that we could use it on the sprinklers, sprayers, etc.
quick-connect-couplingadapter
But the other end of the sprinkler was open (so that I could daisy-chain it if I wanted…or had another hose), so there wasn’t enough water pressure to actually run the sprinkler since most of it was flowing out the other side.
I grabbed another spike sprinkler, and same thing. Then I looked at Justin’s ridiculous collections of sprinklers and found a nicer spike sprinkler that had a cap on the other side.
nice-spike-sprinkler
This did not work, either, since the coupler and adapter did not seem to connect well and water spewed forth like a wicked suburban geyser all over me. I fiddled with it best I could and left it running for two hours, hoping, if nothing else, at least the three feet around the spike would get adequate water.

This evening I plunked the spike in another area of the front lawn and hoped for the best. Then I went out back to go water my potted plants and grabbed the old-fashioned oscillating sprinkler to get my roses and zebra grass.
oscillating-sprinkler
So since I am incredibly lazy, I only kinked the hose to stop the water, then wrestled with the sprayer to remove it. Unfortunately I forgot the cardinal rule of kinking an active hose…you must create two kinks in order to nearly stop the flow of water, or else risk looking like you sat in the front row of the Shamu show.
After fighting with the sprayer, including grabbing it incorrectly so that I actually squeezed the handle and sprayed myself in the face while it was set to “jet”, I finally got the sprinkler attached. Sopping-wet in my work clothes, I triumphantly held up the drizzling sprinkler to show the dogs why I am at the top of the food chain and not them (did I mention I’ve been a bit lonely with Justin gone all these weeks?). I walk up the hill to my plants, arrange the sprinkler, let go of the kink in the hose and ran like hell to keep from getting any wetter.
Apparently our oscillating sprinkler is a bit beat-up from being outside all winter because when I set it to go a full rotation (all the way from one side to the other), it instead tried to sprinkle water under itself. On the plus side, I did not get any wetter. At least not until I went back to attend to the flipped-around upside-down oscillator bar. By the time I splish-sploshed into the house, I looked like I swam with Shamu. This taught me that I should leave this to the lawn fertilizing professionals like a lawn care and tree service, and never do it by myself.

About the Author

Colleen

This is a blog where I will share my adventures and mundane tasks as a work-out-of-home-mom. I now have 2 kids and my wonderful husband, so the juggling has gotten a little bit more tricky (man-on-man defense). We also have 2 dogs and 3 cats (we used to have 4) so as you can imagine, our household is pretty busy. Since I never feel like I'm being listened to, I figured I'll just start talking at the general Internet community and see what happens.

4 Comments

Nicole

On the upside, you could probably count getting soaking wet as a shower, right? You Mom’s who have to be both Mommy and Daddy on a regular basis are heros in my book – my hubby may work 65+ hours a week, but he is usually home at least once to make a half-ass attempt at ‘his’ chores.

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Lawn Care Services Columbia MO

I HATE crunchy lawns! My own is pretty big – and I’m kind of a sucker for sprinklers. There’s always some new version that is going to water my yard just right – ha! Thanks for sharing, I like your sense of humor.

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