Please join me for more summer memories
I became the main candidate to water the lawns for the first time in nearly forty summers in Spokane. My husband was in recuperation from open-heart surgery. It might be surmised after this long a span, we would have invested in a sprinkler system. This had seemed like an unnecessary expense, as a former spectator. Didn’t it provide him with much-needed exercise? Now the need seemed obvious to me.
We were blessed with a watering system for our garden, so at the turn of a switch, voila, our fruits and vegetables became inundated with life-giving moisture. It was a gift, in case you’re wondering why we had a set- up for the garden and not for the much bigger lawn.
I began the grass watering process every evening on the east side of the house, just as the sun began to set. Next, I moved to the south side of our home, where shadows began to cover the grass, trees, and flowers. My major challenge: how to set the rain bird sprinkler to cover enough area, without spraying an unsuspecting neighbor strolling nearby or baptizing myself. My natural abilities didn’t include many mechanical skills, so if I soaked the ground close to the intended space, I was satisfied.
I completed circling the perimeter of the house just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. It was more difficult to calculate the sprinkler’s progress in the deepening darkness. I ended my evening with at least one royal dousing and several mosquito bites to add to my muddy gardening clogs and ragged appearance.
Never again would I shrug off my husband’s thirty-plus years of heroic efforts to keep our lawn one of the greenest in the neighborhood! I felt a definite change in my priorities to include funds for a sprinkler system in our budget next summer. It would provide a sprinkle in much less time.
Dianna
Sharing the Fruit of Maturity
