Pick, Pick, Trowel, Trowel

OMG I am tired. The weekend has been devoted almost entirely to installing a new sprinkler system at my house. I am sunburnt, sore, and worn out. My feet feel like I've been hiking all weekend. I think I've been to Home Depot more times this past week than in the past five years. Props to all my friends who turned out to dig up my yard. Things did not start out so well though, the first trench digger we rented seemed to have trouble cutting through, well, dirt. And it was hard to start and was hard to keep running. So we ended up renting a second trench digger (United Rental rocks, yo!) which had a lot more sac than the first one. We got all the trenches dug by last night and the first circuit of sprinklers installed by dark. Today we hooked up the lines in the back yard and there was, relatively speaking not so much digging to be done. Noelle and Jeff deserve special credit for the planning and execution of this nefarious scheme.

This afternoon Noelle and Esther and I headed over to a greenhouse and we got some trees and smaller plants. One is a frankentree: it has plum, peach, and nectarine branches all grafted onto one trunk. My neighbor traded me some lilies for some of the extra irises I had lying around (literally, we had to execavate them to put in a new sprinkler line). Noelle got those in as well as the perennials in the front walkway, so the place is looking better already. In a week or two I should have some new trees and a new lawn to go with it. Right now there will be pleasant sleeping type activities.