maintain and break

Pam asked to do yard work for our date last week. I though that sounded nice and low maintenance.

The hydrangea doesn't look so good durring the winter, so we moved it to the back yard and replaced it with a new rhodie as well as the 2 Japanese maples that had outgrown their planters. I love blueberry plants, but only 1 of the 6 we planted has done very well. We put in another one and I doubled the amount of drip irrigation to it.

The evening was still young, so I embarked on a project I had put off for some time involving repositioning the pear tree. I had to dig down and around it, which was more work than I anticipated. I was almost underneath it when things started to gang a-gley. The post-hole digger struck something solid, and water boiled up with a hiss. The project turned from casual to serious in that moment. Turns out our neighbor's water main runs right under that tree. It was 10pm on a Saturday night, but they took the news well that tap water, showers, and toilet flushes were indefinitely suspended at their place. We ran our hose to their property. Pam toured Medford until she found a Safeway open past 11pm that had bottled water.

I moved a couple tons of dirt to get good exposure, then schemed about how to fix it quickly.

The next morning proceeded like a normal Sunday, except instead of Sunday School in the Relief Society room, I went to the PVC isle in Grovers plumbing and electrical. There I learned the virtues of the expansion coupler. Eager to put this teaching into practice in my life, and more importantly into the life of my neighbor's water main, I retired to my front yard and after bailing out a buch of rain water I glued it in place and made it back just in time for the close of Priesthood opening exercises. I gave it extra time to dry because I stayed for scout committee meeting, but the thing worked great. Pam and the kids helped tonight to refill the hole and hose off the drive-way. Apparently Erik needed to plant a tree for some cub scout requirement, so this worked out great for him.