Fired up the sprinkler system here for the first time this season. We’ve had a wet enough spring that it hasn’t been necessary (and, in fact the beds are still quite damp under the surface and mulch, so I won’t be putting anything on automated cycles yet. But I wanted to check on the status of the different zones (frozen/broken heads, valve/solenoid failures) before the sprinklers actually were needed.
Everything came up just peachy-keen, including the new drip system in the new front yard. Huzzah.
That said, the garden definitely needs some work.
Sprinklers
- The drip/microhead zone under the deck got pretty mangled by the gardeners a few weeks ago who were raking out all the junk. That needs to be put back together.
- The sprinklers out in front need to be better tuned to the new shape of the front yard. One 360 is mostly watering a bed that is now drip-systemed. One new long-throw sprayer is reaching across the sidewalk into the street for a good part of its arc. Another one is watering across much of the new rocks. So I’ll probably be replacing some heads with simple 180s that match the new, tighter confines.
- The side-back (the area we fenced off during the Great Fencing-In of 2004 is still needing further tweaking of sprinkler head coverage. I might pull one or another of the heads that got pushed outside the fence back inside the fence, just to give it some extra coverage.
Non-Sprinklers
- Dandelions, Mr. Rico! Zillions of ’em! And they’re bad and prickly dandelions, too. Not going to do anything in the grass (our weed service comes next week — in fact, would have been spraying today, save that he came about 15 minutes after I was playing with the sprinklers). But I do need to give the beds a scouring.
- All the roses need trimming of deadwood. This was a harsh winter for the roses, so there’s lots of dead — but a lot of stuff leafing up around them, so I can see what’s live and what’s not coming back.
- I have additional zones in the new terraces to plant, and pots of stuff to plant them from in the side yard. I also … hey, let me look online …
- … Crap, the Botanic Garden Plant Sale is today and tomorrow. Well, it’s not happening today, and likely not tomorrow. Margie suggests, kindly, that we be a bit more “planning” in what we put in front, which is probably a good idea. *sigh* Anyway, things to plant.
- I could probably do a good load of mulching in front and in back, too, if I have the “spare time.”
So even without normal maintenance beyond what I’ve already identified, I have probably a good season’s worth of yard work to get done.
On the other hand, everything growing in beautifully, with the clement weather and rain we’ve been getting, so I’m pretty happy with how things are looking and going out there.