No More Wooden Handles!

Another weekend brought another opportunity to devote some serious time to gardening and yard tasks. Things were actually going pretty smoothly, initially. We had purchased a new reel for rolling up hoses (this one contained in a box) and a new hose, and I was able to get the reel installed and the new hose loaded onto it. Since we use a 100 ft. hose, this is much more convenient and neater of storage.

Next, as I think I've mentioned before, the water for our sprinkler system comes from an irrigation canal. Start of the season tasks involve cleaning the inlet pipe for our irrigation/sprinkler system pump, replacing all the plugs removed last fall to drain the pump and system, priming the pump, and then checking that everything works. We have separate manual valves that control different watering for different sections of our property. Generally, I can run sprinklers in two sections at a time. Today, though, opening the valve to one of the sections dropped off all water pressure to any other section. Somewhere, one of the pipes had ruptured.

Since the sprinkler system pipes are buried, it was not readily apparent where was the leak. After running water through it a few times for several minutes each, I finally spotted water percolating out of the ground. Now it was time to dig. The ground in that particular area has lots of rock, and lots of roots from a nearby bush and tree. Grabbing a long handled shovel, I started to excavate a hole to uncover the pipe. The first shovel load was fine. The second ... well, I'm still not sure whether the edge of the shovel got stuck under a root or rock, but the handle suddenly snapped lengthwise along the grain. This was a fairly new shovel. Fortunately, I had a spade with a fiberglass handle and was able to finish digging out the pipe. (Actually, I have several other spades, but they all have wooden handles, and I was reluctant to use them).

Lessons learned: (1) Another example of "two is one, and one is none."  Have backups or substitutes for basic tools. (2) Modern technologies have given us better handles, so use them. I have made sure that my sledge hammer and certain other tools have plastic or fiber glass handles, which are generally stronger and more resistant to breaking and splitting. (3) Sometimes you have to grin and bear it. Things go wrong, but c'est la vie.

My son recently was reading that coconut milk works very well for getting cuttings from fruit trees to sprout. We picked up a can of coconut milk, and will try it with a cutting from a cherry tree and a plum tree. Hopefully, in two or three weeks, I will be able to let you know how it worked.