Irrigation

Now that I'm a homeowner in Florida, I need to become an expert gardener in matters Floridian. This means, among other things, adapting to the use of irrigation. The irrigation system in our yard was very flawed when we first moved in. To say we were clueless about how to use it or fix it is being nice. I didn't even know where the controls were. It was about a year after we moved in that I discovered them, behind a row of bushes, in the most inaccessible place. It doesn't matter where they are, I have no idea how to operate the system any way.

I just hope that it comes on when it's supposed to and does the job. When we first got here, the little sprinklers were watering everything except the garden; such as, the driveway, the sidewalk, the lanai screen, etc etc. So after a lot of back and forth, including changing the timer, suffering through a visit from the irrigation "police" due to a go round between the gardener and the irrigation people (such that the irrigation, in addition to going on every day for three weeks, instead of once a week, went on one day at noon, instead of 6:00). It was a mess. It has since been functioning a lot better, although some of the sprinklers were smacking the plants rather than shooting out over them.

In my infinite stupidity, I decided I wanted to fix the smacking sprinklers myself. Why oh why did I think this was something that i could do?. I went to the hardware store and got some extension rods so that the water would shoot out over the plants rather than into them. When the irrigation went on, they worked just fine. Ok, so they did have a tendency to lean a bit as they shot the water out. Another sprinkler that I tried to fix, using hardware that the gardener gave me, was leaking out the bottom and not working at all.

I went out to see what to do, and figured I should take the hardware off and return the spigot to it's original position. No sooner had I unscrewed the hardware when the water shot out of the spigot like a geyser. It went up about, I'm estimating here, 25 feet in the air in a continuous stream. I tried to get in there to put the cap back on, but the water pressure was so strong I couldn't get it to screw in. The water was smacking me in the face. I was completely soaked and the geyser kept shooting and shooting. I had to sit there trying to aim it so it wouldn't shoot all that stinky ground water into our pool and onto the lanai pavement. I was soaking wet and getting stiff from crouching. It was cold. And, I needed to pee.

About ten minutes later, out comes our neighbor Pete. He's looking dazed. He waded into the bushes and shut off the irrigation (something I should learn how to do come to think of it). The geyser finally died back. Pete told me he had never in his life seen anything like that. I wonder, he said, whether the irrigation people have an emergency number. Yeah, right!

After a long hot shower, I feel like a million bucks. There is still a small, shall we say,smell not unlike rotten eggs on me. Can I really go to the store like this? Now I have to remember to call the irrigation people to come out and fix this. Ah, Florida home ownership. But, I will never ever touch the irrigation system again, except, maybe, to shut it off!