Tag Archives: irrigation system

August 1, 2024 · 8:36 am

Happy August 2024

Poster My Wall

In Arkansas we’re welcoming August today with a heat index this afternoon of 112. GACK! Happily, I had a productive morning outside yesterday, reprogramming our irrigation units to each run 15 minutes. We monitored the watering yesterday afternoon and all went well.

I didn’t find any ripe tomatoes, but 2 of my tomato suckers plants are still alive, so I’m a bit hopeful now. I started on one end of the house and got 5 flower planters weeded before I got too hot. They were in the shade and the ‘excessive heat warning’ didn’t start until noon. Still, with the outside work, I came in wringing wet. I showered and washed my hair for the second time yesterday before lunch. :0)

My husband took our dog, Amber, to fill up the gas cans in preparation for the new mower to be delivered some time tomorrow. We have four, so we each grabbed two from the back of the truck to take out to the shop.

I haven’t decided if I’ll work outside again this morning or take the day off. Even with working out there in the coolest part of the day – in the shade – it took me a long time to get back to a normal temperature.

The Organized Mama

I’m going to try to get up to my art room today. I’m starting to ‘wood burn’ in my dreams now, a sure sign I need to get up there and get the new piece started.

Stay cool and enjoy your day.

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June 29, 2024 · 3:43 pm

Irrigation Woes

SweatBlock

Whew. My husband came out to help with the irrigation system shortly after I went out. The unit for the back yard planters came on and we soon found we had a spewing leak in the hose. I finally managed to turn off the system so we could fix it. It turned out to be simply a blown connection, rather than a break in the hose, so it was quickly fixed. It took me quite a bit of time to get the unit on again, running it on ‘manual.’

Soon after, the 2nd unit, the one for the front planters, came on. All was good except for a kink in the hose going to one of the planters beside the front porch. My husband was able to make it workable while I checked the rest of the planters. He says he still needs to work on that, but I insisted we come in, get something cool to drink, and rest. We were both wringing wet.

I did turn on the part that will water the tomato suckers when I find and replant them, hopefully tomorrow morning early.

The temperature is 97 right now with a heat index of ONLY 106, rather than the 115 they were predicting. I feel as if I should feel cold…

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June 24, 2024 · 9:07 am

Monday 6-24-2024

Free-Spirited Expressions – Priscilla Marie – Pinterest

I’m still limping around a bit after having a Charley Horse this morning about 4am. My sweet husband massaged my calf again when I came downstairs, rubbing some pain cream in. The pain is easing and I’m loosening up some now. I’ll drink more water today and do more mindful stretching in my yoga practice this afternoon.

We’ll do exciting stuff today, such as gathering the trash and driving it down to the bottom of the driveway, getting our mail, and grocery shopping before spending the rest of the day inside, since the temperature is supposed to get to 100 degrees F. today with a heat index of 111. That’s insane.

Thankfully, the programming I did on our two water timers (we now have one of each of the above) for our irrigation system yesterday WORKED, so the planters for the flowers and tomatoes will get the water they need mid-afternoon. If this weather continues, though, I’ll probably lengthen the time of watering from each unit.

Etsy

I’ll work on clearing off my drafting table in my art room this afternoon in preparation for trying out my new wood burning kit. I’m really hopeful that the lighter, different tool design and wire tips will allow me to practice enough to be able to create some things. I have all I need now, except for the skill…. :0)

Stay cool!

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June 23, 2024 · 9:18 am

Sunday 6-23-2024

Dale Zearfaus-Pinterest

Our heat index is forecast to be 104 degrees F. this afternoon. UGH. Yesterday we replaced a water timer in the well house that controls the back yard irrigation system. We THINK all is functional now. I’ll go out in a minute to check what time the two systems are supposed to start and I’ll monitor that today to see if 1) each of the two systems is turning on and 2) if we are, in fact, getting water everywhere we need it. The rest of the day will be spent – I HOPE – inside where it’s cool. :0)

I received my new wood burning kit yesterday. I’m going to clear a space for it upstairs on my drafting table as soon as possible and start playing with it. I’m embarrassed that I’ve been intimidated by the other type of system I have that I’ve had trouble using it, due to its weight and my hand arthritis. I’m hopeful I’ll be more successful with this different style.

sam-@Britton65Sam on X

On Friday my husband asked me out to lunch. We went to the Pizza Barn, one of our favorite places. My husband had a cheeseburger “with everything,” and I had chicken fingers/strips with honey mustard, eating my fill there and bringing home a box with enough for another lunch for me. All well and good, but that started a ‘binge’ for me. I ended up eating some chips from my husband’s stash for the first time in a year or so, followed by no sugar added ice cream and Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. Then I had the 2nd half of my chicken fingers/strips as part of my lunch yesterday.

As you can imagine, it was as if I had eaten lead. I gained 2 and a half pounds. I’m back on track today, but it’s a bit sad to have to lose the SAME pounds over and over…

I wish you an enjoyable day.

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June 21, 2024 · 9:08 am

Friday 6-21-2024

Jet – Taking It Easy in Yet Another “Bed,” (aka my desk calendar.)

My husband slept in this morning. He said he had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Once he did fall asleep, though, he slept okay. We’re getting to the point where any time, anywhere, we can get some rest is good, so we don’t worry about having to take naps or keep weird hours.

I finally ordered a different style of wood burning tool, since the equipment I have –

  • still intimidates me
  • is too heavy and makes my hand arthritis act up quickly

As you can see from the image above, this one has WIRE tips, rather than metal shaped pieces. I’ve read some really good reviews from both beginners, like me, and seasoned pros, who all seem to be happy with this one. Fingers crossed this will get me over the obstacle of intimidation and into trying to actually make something more than the earrings I’ve done so far.

My husband invited me to eat lunch out today! We haven’t been to the Pizza Barn in a long time. My Lunch Bunch group of over 20 years has faded away. One of my friends now lives in a retirement place and is only available when her daughter can bring her. The other has been ‘too busy,’ for a long time and so the group and shared lunches is in the past now. It will be nice to see the owner and our favorite waitress today. We’ll do several quick errands after and then be home for the rest of a hot day.

We’re trying to get our irrigation system going for the flower beds. We got the front working yesterday, though the water pressure is low for some reason. We’ll tweak that, plus test the back one today. THEN I’ll try to program them so that when one stops, the other goes on for a timed period each day. I’m still using hoses and water sprinkler containers right now until we get things going and settled.

Try to stay cool!

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June 20, 2024 · 9:58 am

Thursday 6-20-2024

“Birds of a Feather” series – HandmadeHavenbyLinda on Etsy.

I recently bought what is advertised as a ‘barefoot’ tennis shoe. After three full days of wearing them, I’m sold. I’ve been having discomfort, trying different shoes in my closet and then taking them off halfway through the day. I have NO inclination to take these off. They are extra wide, with lots of room for my old toes. I’m not sliding around in them or feeling pinches or wearing on places on my feet. I can really ‘forget’ about my feet!!!!

I have just ordered a second pair as a backup and also a pair of their ‘winter tennis shoes’ which are fur lined for warmth and waterproof.

Both are advertised as ‘barefoot,’ “zero drop,” ‘wide toe box.’ One is under the brand Joomra and the snow boots are under HiGropcore. I read a LOT of reviews before buying the pair I’m wearing now, and read more, particularly for the winter boot design. I feel almost as if I’ve won the lottery. I bought them through Amazon because if I find the new pairs aren’t as advertised, I can return them easily.

DripWorks.com

I’m going to test our planter box irrigation system today, if I can make myself go out there. I’m not really sure why I’m being so recalcitrant about this. I’ve actually gone out and watered the two tomato planters by hand with the hose, and filled watering cans to water the elephant ear plants in three different places in the yard, but for some reason, I’m putting this off.

I guess I’m afraid we’ll get into a never-ending ‘death struggle’ with the system, not being able to figure out what’s wrong, with my husband refusing to quit, even though we’re about to pass out in the heat.

Maybe I can ‘sneak’ out there, turn it on in the front manually, and see what happens…

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June 19, 2024 · 9:40 am

Wednesday 6-19-2024

My “Birds of a Feather” series greeting cards. 5×7. Blank inside. Fun to use to reach out to friends and family.
ink drop – Adobe.com

Freedom is such a beautiful thing – to be cherished and celebrated every day. Today is Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery in the U.S. The actual Federal holiday was declared in 2021.

My husband ordered this and it was delivered yesterday. He got it ready to put up and we got it up – all but the final wiring detail – yesterday. We finished it up this morning. It’s really bright neon. I think it looks great, and it’s the first thing he’s been really excited about in quite awhile. :0)

I’m going to try to get him to help me test and program our irrigation system this evening. I’ve been watering the tomatoes with a hose, and then taking watering cans around to the elephant ears, but we need to get serious now that the constant rains have stopped and the heat is pouring in.

I harvested a bunch of nice tomatoes yesterday. We’re now enjoying them for lunch AND dinner. They’re a bit difficult to eat because I tend to smile so much as I’m eating them. I love them so much! :0)

This is the planter in front of the garage. The elephant ear plant is doing really well so far.

This is the planter to one side of our front porch. I’m hoping that this plant gets really large, spilling out both sides of the planter.

I’m a bit worried about this one. This planter is on the east end of the house. It’s shaded, but we’ve had elephant ear plants here before and they did well. This one is really growing slowly.

Have a fun day!

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June 11, 2023 · 11:52 am

This and That 6-11-2023

Good Thoughts-Riny van Gend de Zeeuw-Facebook-Buddha Heart

___________

  • No hot water – guy cleaned points and got the system started, but then it quickly switched to ’13’ again. He called our plumber, saying it needs to be ‘flushed.’ Our plumber has the special equipment needed to do that, and so we wait for a call from him.
  • Waiting on mattress air pump lady to get back to us about warranty. Once we get that info, we’ll decide what to do.
  • Husband has given up on trying to fix our driveway detector and has ordered another.
  • Water irrigation system for yard is acting wonky. Will trouble shoot when the other priorities have been addressed.
  • The county/city road people are demolishing the bridge between us and town TOMORROW. No info on how long building the new one will take. We will have to take the back way out, adding several miles to our trip, keeping an eye on the sign that is near our house, but in the opposite direction from the way we’ll have to go until further notice. Any service people will have to be apprised of this, also, assuming they can then make it up our driveway once they get here…
  • We just finished putting away groceries. We’ve stocked up so we have as little reason to go to town as possible until the bridge is finished.

Enjoy your day.

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May 22, 2022 · 10:02 am

Cloudy Sunday

Silk Roads-flickr.com

I LOVE this troll! He’s so ugly I want to adopt him, though he looks like he’d wreak havoc on an hourly basis around the house…

ML Lewis

A last look at the beach. And what a virtual vacation it was! My SIL is home safe and sound and ready to take up her ‘regular’ life again. I’m hoping I’ll hear more details of her time on the beach soon. A last sunrise over which I can drool. Ahhhhhh.

Here in Arkansas it’s quite cloudy. A cold front is pushing through and the HIGH will be 66 today! Quite a change from the 90 degrees F. we’ve been having the past couple of weeks. At least we did not get any severe weather yesterday as we could have with the change. It looks like we could get rain at any time this morning. What a difference!

We have our yard irrigation system half solved. We got a timer yesterday, but it will only control one outflow. We have it set up for the BACK of our yard so it will handle the two tomato planters and our deck flowers. We’ll need to call our plumber to see if he can arrange another line for the front and then we can put another timer on that. We’ll see what he says.

No big plans for the day yet. I hope your Sunday is a good one.

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March 17, 2022 · 9:49 am

The Spring Garden Has Sprung

I had filled up our raised bed, square-foot planters with Mel’s Mix (peat moss, vermiculite, and three kinds of compost) at the end of fall. We put a square plastic bucket in the middle of each planter, then stretched a tarp over each box, using bungee cords to secure them. We had to replace the tarps about a month ago or so, since the weather and sun had pretty much disintegrated them. The purpose of this was to try NOT to have to spend several days prepping the garden before I could plant.

When I started yesterday, the tarps were completely water-laden. I pulled them off the planters and spread them beside the shop, holding them in place with bricks, to dry in the sun. I stored the plastic buckets and bungee cords in one of the trash cans and put it under one of the planters.

There were VERY few weeds in the planters, so I was able to get started with the planting almost immediately! Hooray!!!!!!

If you look carefully, you can see the wire we strung in two directions, creating the ‘squares’ for planting. I was able to get spinach, red onion sets, broccoli, leaf lettuce, and cauliflower plants in town.

I got everything planted except for the red onion sets. I’ll try to get those planted today.

I need to find the timer for our irrigation system, put new batteries in it, and hook it up to the garden faucet, and then hook up the hoses that go to the garden planters.

You can see the hose that runs down the middle of the three planters on one side of the garden. You can also see the sprinkler in the middle of each box. Both sides are set up the same way, then tied together so the whole system works as one on the timer.

I’ll try to get the red onion sets planted today. We’re due for rain late this evening-into-tomorrow, so it’ll be okay if I wait until the weekend to get the irrigation system set up.

I’ll see what other plants are available the next time we have a chance.

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June 12, 2021 · 11:19 am

Nice Saturday

creanavt.tumblr.com

I’m having a good day so far, though – as you can see above – obviously not a good hair day…. :0)

First of all, IT’S NOT RAINING! In fact, from the look of the weather forecast, our rainy season has finally come to an end. This means that we need to get out some time this weekend – preferably this evening – and test our irrigation system, fix any blowouts, and schedule and run the system. Some of our spoiled plants – used to the cooler temperatures and lots and lots of rain, are starting to look wilted.

One of the last tasks remaining on the dismantling of the greenhouse project was to tie some neon pink surveyor’s tape on the stake in the ground so that the people who come (on no particular schedule that I can tell) to mow the gas company’s easement on the side of our yard won’t hurt themselves or their equipment running into or over the stake. I also took a sledgehammer. I hit the stake several times in all directions and was able to pull the stake completely out! So I brought the stake, hammer, and tape back to the house. Mission accomplished!

I took some pictures of some of the prettier things in our yard while I was out walking around.

This picture and the next are really making me smile today. Last year I had truly great elephant ears. I over-wintered them in peat moss in the garage and replanted them at the beginning of the spring. Nothing happened. :0( They were gone. I ordered some bulbs online in desperation. I received and planted three bulbs. Nothing was happening, so I decided that I wasn’t going to have anything. This one popped up yesterday. You can see the second one in the next picture. The third one hasn’t done anything, but I won’t be greedy.
I am truly delighted and hope they will get large and lush.

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June 9, 2021 · 9:49 am

Thoughts on a Wednesday 6-9-2021

tomwhitestudio.com

Isn’t this wonderful? The child’s happiness just radiates from this sculpture. (Not sure how happy the frog is, though)

Summer is here in Arkansas all of a sudden. The temperatures are soaring, the humidity is rising. Afternoon thunderstorms are forecast almost daily, with or without severe weather. We have had SO much rain this year that one of the next things we need to do is trim out some of the greenery that is trying to close off our driveway. I will drive the truck S-L-O-W-L-Y down one side of the driveway. My husband will ride in the back, yelling at me to stop each time he needs to work an area. He’ll lop things off as well as possible, throwing the debris to the side of the driveway. When we get to the bottom (650 feet down our steep driveway) I’ll drive to the church, turn around and then go UP the other side of the driveway. We have SO much this year that we will probably need to do this several times before it is reasonably clear.

Ironically, one of the next pressing things is to get our irrigation system for the yard on, tested, repaired where we have blowouts, and schedule to run. Our rain will probably shut off one of these days, like Mother Nature turned off the faucet, and things will dry up and die fast.

I’ll spread out the black plastic we had on the floor of the greenhouse, trying to get the remaining plastic to dry enough that the mud will fall off. Right now the mud and rain makes it weigh a TON. I think that once it is dry enough, I can get the remains into two more leaf bags. Then I’ll spread grass seed on the bare area that was under the plastic and clean things up. And the dismantling of my beloved greenhouse will be finished. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to make it work. It was too cold or too hot 99 percent of the time. We did what we could, with barrels of water warmed up by the sun, plus a space heater on a LONG extension cord in the winter, and extra fans and as much cross breeze as we could get in the summer. I think we could have made it work if we could have afforded to fully heat and cool it. Maybe we can try again if we win the lottery or the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes.

One thing we were looking for over 30 years ago now when we were looking for land on which to build our home, was running water (a brook, or stream, or even a pond.) We couldn’t find that and ‘settled for” the top of a ridge line with a terrific view of two more ridge lines behind us and the valley in-between. If we had been able to find the water, maybe I could still find the childhood joy of catching a frog…

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July 24, 2020 · 10:06 am

Thing One and Thing Two

New Animalbook

My husband and I got a couple of things done yesterday that had been weighing on us.

THING ONE:  We finally drilled holes in the pvc pipe that runs along the back edge of the brick planter we had to rebuild recently, so that the elephant ear plants I put in there could get some water. The only problem, though, when we got that done, was that the irrigation system didn’t turn on when it was supposed to.

The brains for it in the well house showed that one of the power failures lately got it. It though it was 11:00 at night in January in 2007. :0)

I managed to find the manual for the system – HOORAY for me!

AND

when my husband got frustrated, I was able to reset things so I could reprogram the system. The first time I tried, I messed up; but the second time it worked! We went around the yard adjusting the Station 1 planters and then moved to the back when Station 2 started. YEA!!!!!

THING TWO:  The second thing was our supplementary driveway alarm had failed. My husband ordered a new one. When it came, he painted the part we attach to a tree in camouflage. That was as far as the project got until I remembered it yesterday while we were waiting for the irrigation system to turn on.

He got the part from the shop, attached it to the tree, and we tested it, having it working just before we worked with the irrigation system!  ANOTHER YEA!!!!

I love days where we can do something that stays done awhile. :0)

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September 16, 2019 · 1:41 pm

Thoughts on a Monday 9-16-2019

Amber

I’m late in blog posting today. Amber went out to the veggie garden with me and helped clean up the remaining planter boxes. I encountered fire ants twice, but had gone in ARMED with EIGHT bug killer in a 2-gallon sprayer and hosed them down. I didn’t get stung, thank goodness! I’ll take pics later of the cleaned up garden, but I was simply too hot when I finished to go back with the camera. (The heat index is 106 or more right now). Once I’m SURE we’ve killed all the ants in the boxes, I’ll try Robin’s suggestion of putting Vaseline around each support leg.

I was actually able to gather quite a few small tomatoes yesterday from the converted brick planters on the other side of the house. I didn’t have a basket with me, so simply used the bottom of my shirt as a carrier. :0)  We’re about to the end of the season now. The plants look pretty sad, but we’re still getting small ripe tomatoes, so we’re happy.

The main water line from the well house to the irrigation system had a blowout last night. Our son was able to cobble it back together, but it’s obvious we need a longer hose length of super sturdy stuff to handle the pressure. We got two lengths of hose cut at the hardware store today in two different diameters, thinking one of them will fit. I’m not sure if we’ll get to the replacement today.

My husband started thinking about our truck battery this morning. He keeps a log of our important purchases on his computer so that we can look things up quickly. We discovered that we bought the battery for the truck in 2014!  Since our battieries usually die suddenly with change of season, we bought a replacement battery while we were in town today. We’ll change it out later today and take the old one back to the store tomorrow for credit.

Our long time good friends will go bowling with us tonight! Our son is still home with us (a thing for which we are thankful every day) and so we’ll have a lot of fun this evening bowling terribly and then commiserating with ice cream at Braum’s afterwards.

When I finish cooling off and glugging water, we’ll have lunch and then I’ll do my first session of yoga for the week.

I hope your Monday is off to a good start.

 

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