The task at hand

While Jay is away things still have to get done around here, and now that the fence is up (I am so happy to see that fence every time I look out the window!) it's time to get back to the dirt.  The plan - water the dirt to make the weeds grow.  Then spray the weeds with weed killer, wait the necessary time, then finally plant the grass seed!
  Two nights ago I went to Home Depot with big plans to come home with sprinklers.  After staring blankly at the selection, a really helpful employee came to my rescue.  After discussing the different sprinklers he took out some paper and a pen and had me draw the yard....the drawing was so good that he told me to go home, measure the yard, and come back the next day!  So last night, we head back (Shep is welcome in the store and was nice enough to accompany me both times!) and find the same guy.  This time I'm armed with my own drawing from home with some measurements.  In the end I settled on two different styles of sprinkler and an extra hose.  While the guy was helpful and shared some knowledge about weed killers (I'm going to go ahead and trust him. He has a stack of Customer Service Excellence badges tacked to his smock), he probably thought I was a little ridiculous for turning this process into such an ordeal, and really, it probably doesn't even matter what sprinkler you take home.
  That was such a big task for me that I called it a night and waited until today to start.  Friday.  Well, tonight, really.  About 8:45 pm I decide it's time to go for it.  Just in time for the sun to set and the few outside lights we have to not really be of any help in the far reaches of yard I started in.
  With head lamp attached, I hooked up the first sprinkler.  It has multiple settings and comes with a handy spike that can be repeatedly slammed toward the hard ground and never actually penetrate it.  After a few tries, I found a soft spot.  It took about 8 adjustments to get the range right, but the distance wasn't enough....I had to move the sprinkler later to cover the smallest patch of the front yard!  In the back I was working with a classic click-click sprinkler (that description should give you a mental image).  Again with the adjusting the range setting multiple times; and I wasn't getting much distance.  About 5 minutes into messing with it I realize that there's an adjustable metal piece at the front of the sprinkler to alter the spray distance!  Maybe that was included on the tiny scrap of paper that came attached to the sprinkler, but I really thought I could handle these things without instructions!
  And so it went, back and forth from front to back yard, in the dark, moving and adjusting sprinklers to try to cover all of the dirt.  At one point I came to the back to find that the sprinkler had uprooted what tiny bit of spike I had managed to get into the dirt and was spraying willy-nilly in the air.  After an hour of talking to myself and the sprinklers, and a solid 5 minute session of just holding the sprinkler and aiming it at the dirt, I called it a night.
  Tomorrow is a new day with a new opportunity to make an ass of myself.  At least the new fence protects everyone else from this sight.  I can just imagine what those nasty chickens would be thinking.

P.S.  Don't forget to keep an eye on the map for bike trip progress!

Feel The Burn 2010

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