Irrigation Woes
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Summer is a difficult time for me, because the job of maintaining the irrigation system for all our flowers (despite my pleas, Butterfly will NOT stop propagating flowers!), falls entirely on my shoulders.   And by “summer”, I mean when the rains stop here in the foothills of Northern California.  Depending upon the year, “summer” can start in March, or any time thereafter.  Once the rains stop, they don’t start again for a good six months.  It can be a long, long dry spell.  Here in California we call it fire season.

Things are made more difficult because I have installed drip irrigation in an attempt to be a frugal water user.  Now add dirty ditch water to the mix, and you can guess what I spend a lot of my time doing!  I’m always cleaning filters, or adding drip lines to new plants, fixing leaks, or chasing Butterfly with a shovel, threatening to kill her if she plants another freaking flower.

She has this habit of working around the place, sticking plants in the ground, and then coming to me to say, “I planted 7 new kids that need water.”

“Why didn’t you plant them where it’s already wet?” I ask her.

“Because that isn’t where I wanted them to grow.”  But of course. How silly of me to think otherwise.

Just the other morning, she walked in with the morning newspapers - late.  She goes out to retrieve them at the end of our ½ mile long driveway each day.  I can tell something’s up if she hasn’t shown up by about 7:30am or so.

“Houston, we have a problem!” she announced.

I really hate when she says this.  It means I can forget about enjoying my morning cup of coffee, even if it is decaf, while I read the paper.

“What now?”  I asked.

“The rocket only says a quarter to,” she replied.

I rolled my eyes.  It’s a good thing I understand Butterfly-speak.  Allow me to explain.

It even looks like it's hard being Barney

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The rocket

n looks like it's hard being Barney

This is just the first of many filters that our irrigation water goes into when it comes out of the canal.  We fondly refer to it as “the rocket” because … well, because it looks like a rocket to me!  The water flows down from a canal that is about 800’ or so up the hill on our neighbor’s property.  By the time it hits the rocket, there should be about 50lbs of pressure.

We had to replace the outer casing last year (due to rust) and you can see the old one still laying on the ground to the left.  I’m still chewing on what to do with that old one.  Seems like there should be some use for it. Garden art, perhaps?  A totem pole?  Electric Horseman just cringes at my suggestions, but I know that I’ll come up with something.  It only took me 40 or so years to come up for a new use for the tetherball pole.

Here you can see the gauge that Butterfly checks each morning as she walks by on her way to get the paper.  If there is normal water pressure, she would say, “The rocket says 12 o’clock,” meaning that the needle is pointing straight up to indicate about 50lbs of pressure.  Butterfly, however, would never read the gauge in those terms. That would be way too easy.

"a quarter to"

Here’s the gauge needle where we hope never to see it, in Butterfly’s “quarter to” position (as in “quarter to the hour”).  Only Butterfly uses a pressure gauge to tell time.

So you can now understand why, when she says, “The rocket says a quarter to,” I know I’m going to be spending some time figuring out why we’ve lost pressure!

First I have to gather the necessary tools for the job.

Proper tools and attire

Some tools are multi-use.  The boots (and yes, cute rubber boots are required!), are for wading in the canal and for walking through the tall grass where there might be snakes (rattlers).  The shovel is for weed removal, snake removal (some might say snake head removal, but I prefer to just move them out of my way and allow us each to go our separate ways), and longhorn protection.

Oreo

Cowboy

Cowboy and Oreo are normally pretty gentle steers, but in case they’re feeling frisky, those horns are not something I want to deal with unarmed.  Hence the shovel.

Once I’m properly equipped and attired, I’m ready to hike up the hill to the canal.

Fence line leading to the canal

The canal is way up there at the top of the hill.  This part of the trek is on a neighbor’s property (where Cowboy and Oreo live).  Yes, it’s a long walk uphill, but this is a definite advantage in that it gives me gravity feed water – no pumping!

I encountered some snoopy critters along the way, residing in the pasture across the fence.

Snoopy horses

Now I’m almost half way to my destination.  

The canal's at the top of the hill

The canal is just below that tree line in the distance.

The canal is in sight

Finally I reached the canal.  Already I suspect the cause of my problem because I can see evidence that the canal has been cleaned.

A sparkling clean waterway!

Yup, the canal is clean as a whistle!  All the weeds have been scooped out and piled down one side.  The other side has even been mowed.  And my pipe has been lifted out of the water and left out of the water!  I’m sure it was done so that the tractor equipment didn’t accidentally harm the pipe, and then by the time the work got done at the other end of the canal, my pipe was long forgotten.  It was a simple matter for me to remedy the situation and get the water flowing down to the rocket once again.

I am extremely grateful that the canal has been so thoroughly cleaned.  Some summers I fight weeds clogging our pipe on a regular basis.  This time the canal has been cleaned so well that I may not have a weed problem for the entire summer water season.

As I headed back down the hill, the snoopy horses were still hanging around the fence line.

Whatchya doin'?

Reflection

Hey!  I’m in the horse’s eye!  I crack me up!  I tried to get the horse to stay still for a better photo, but the flies were bothering him so much that this was the best I could do.  Heads were constantly bobbing.

By now the horses were very interested in what was going on and followed along.  Perhaps they thought my horses might be waiting for them at the bottom of the hill.

Food?  Do you have food?

My dogs were running to greet me as I got back to my gate, which caught the attention of my new-found equine friends.

Would you look at that!?!?

There’s nothing like horses on point!