Not Intuitive

I've talked about the juniper removal and replacement with sod, but I'm not sure I mentioned watering this new sod. That's about to change.

The controller I have for my sprinkler system feels much more complicated (to me) than the one I had at my house in Minnesota. That was felt easy and straightforward. This one? Not so much.

I've relied on other people to set it for me. The landscaper. My brother. But my yard is just a muddy, sodden mess and I didn't understand why.

I also didn't understand how my water bill could be as ridiculous as it was.

Then I tried to adjust the time on the controller myself, made everything worse with zones running twice, and I was like what is going on?

Finally, on Saturday, I did a search for the manufacturer/controller names. Found a YouTube video that the company created about how to program the controller. It was eye opening to say the least. What I thought were Zones were program numbers.

PROGRAM NUMBERS!

My sprinkler was running THREE times. Every day.

When the landscaper had it scheduled to run for an hour for the new sod, it was running for three hours.

I didn't notice this because I was sleeping while most of the running was happening, but when I adjusted the times, it started running while I was awake and that's when I noticed it was going off twice. Actually, it was still going off three times, but I wasn't up for the first one.

With the YouTube video fresh in my mind, I went to the controller and turned off programs 2 and 3. Verified that program 1 was hitting all three zones and turned it to run.

Of course, I'm going to continue to monitor the situation to make sure I did it right, but I'm hoping this takes care of how wet and muddy my yard is. The water bill is still going to be outrageous this month, but hopefully that goes down next month.

What a mess. 

Junipers: Post Script Part 2

Please go back and read part one if you haven't already. This is part two of the saga.

I flip the lever, get hit in the face with a burst of water from the sprinkler, and try to run to avoid taking another slam of water. Unfortunately, I didn't take a couple of things into consideration.

One: I'm on an incline. The yard goes up where I'm standing which (I guess) is why the original owner had junipers there instead of sod to begin with.

Two: The ground is very uneven.

Instead of agilely running away from the water like I planned, I literally face plant on my first step. Thank God for my privacy fence so none of my neighbors got to see that inelegant landing.

Now the real fun begins. My Apple Watch is pinging an "SOS: Hard Fall Detected" message and wants to call for help!

NO! NO! NO!

I don't need any help. I'm fine. Muddy. Wet from the sprinkler. But fine.

And I can't get that stupid thing to stop. I'm to the point where I'm trying to Google how to turn that damn thing off before it calls 9-1-1.

It took (what felt like) forever, but I finally got it to stop.

Now, I'm plotting because the last thing I want is a repeat of this experience. I debate the old hoses, the heavy rubber ones stored in my garage, but I really don't want to lug them around. The answer is clearly to buy a second 100 foot expandable hose because the two of them attached to each other should solve the issue.

From what I read, there are other issues with water pressure and stuff, but I'll take that trade off to prevent another night of getting soaked with water, Apple Watch freaking out about a little face plant, and doing a load of (unexpected) laundry because everything I'm wearing is covered in mud.

This HOPEFULLY concludes the story of the junipers, but I haven't used my second section of hose yet.

Junipers: Post Script

The new section of sod (of course) needs more watering than the sod that's been in for a while. Also, water in Georgia is ridiculously expensive! I literally pay more for one month of watering x3.5 than I do for three months of watering when I lived in Minnesota.

But the landscaper took the sprinkling time down to half an hour from an hour (AN HOUR! GAH!) and told me to sprinkle the new sod more.

So I bought a lightweight, 100 foot house. It's one of those expandable ones. I do have rubber hoses, but they're so heavy and it's hard to haul them around.

And this is the beginning of the saga.

First, I nearly bought a fifty-foot hose because surely I wouldn't need a full 100 feet. But I most definitely did need 100 feet. I wish I'd known what expandable hoses are like before I bought the hose. Alas, I figured 100 feet is 100 feet. I do not believe this to be true. I believe it is only 100 feet while the water is running through it.

Which leads me to point two. Without water running through the hose, making it expand, it does not reach the new sod and I was unable to position the sprinkler I also bought. So I had to turn the lever at the head of the hose to the off position, turn on the water, and then, after the hose expanded, position it.

Point three. After getting the sprinkler positioned, I had to turn that lever at the head of the hose back on. We all know what happened then, right?

Water hit me in the face.

But wait! There's More! Stay tuned for Part 2. 

I Chose Poorly

In my last post, I talked about the difficulty I had choosing one of my good notebooks for (some kind of) a journal. I wish I was still dithering because I chose so poorly.

I had this great navy blue, hardcover notebook with silver stars on the front. Perfect, I thought. It even had gorgeous holographic stars on the page edges. It was so beautiful. I was agog. Beautiful edges, navy blue so it will stay clean-looking. What more could I ask for?

Choice made, I began adding the journaling stickers I've been buying for several years to the pages.

It wasn't until I had a number of weeks in that I noticed that the pages were getting lumpy because I was putting the stickers in the same places. Seven days in a week, across two spreads, giving myself enough room to write.

I didn't expect this because it's the thick, 160 GSM paper. Although maybe I should have known? It's just that I primarily use Tomoe River Paper, which is very thin and I have to be very careful with stickers. I expected thicker paper would have easier results.

I decided I'd live with the lumpy.

What made my choice of notebook such a poor one is that the stickers wrecked the smoothness of the page edges. Now there were gaps. Small gaps, but still gaps. Which means that gorgeous holograph is muted. Mostly gone.

I should have picked a notebook with regular edges, but it's far too late now.

I have learned a valuable lesson. 

The Notebook Dilemma

I swore (SWORE!) that I wasn't going to save my good notebooks. That I bought them to use them and that's exactly what I was going to do.

I also have quite a collection of journaling stickers and I thought what if I took an A5 notebook, used my journaling stickers and created something with that?

And then I ran into the notebook issue.

I have a lot of nice, hardcover notebooks. I want to use the one with the lavender pages. Oh, but I can't use lavender paper because it might clash with my journaling stickers. Those are all different colors and I don't want the paper color to hold me back.

What if I used the new notebook with the books? No, I don't want to use that one. I'm saving that for something different. Maybe a reading journal.

Me to me: You haven't completed a reading journal yet. Including the one you started this year and did nothing except the title page and some challenge pages.

Okay, but not the books notebook.

What about the dragon notebook?

Oh, no, I can't use the dragon notebook. That one is too special and I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this idea of mine.

What about the black notebook with the pattern?

Yeah, well, that one has page numbers and little marks to let you know where the center of the dot grid is. I'd really like to save that one because I can't replace it and I'm not sure what I'm--

What about the new notebook with the floral design?

Um?

The notebook with the southwest design?

And here I sit. No notebook chosen because I can't decide.