We have thrown the two levers that shut off water to the yard, opened the outdoor taps wide, plus unscrewed the less-than-dime-sized little screw plugs that let air into the pipes for the winter, to drain any low spot and dry them out.
One thing we absolutely appreciate about this house…no 300.00 bill from the entrepreneurs who will ‘blow out’ your irrigation system and winterize your pipes. Our house takes two people 15 minutes. We clip a baggie with the two essential screw plugs in it to the pipes in question, and we’re good until spring, at which point we will screw in the plugs, throw the levers to open position, and la! we’re open for business with the garden hoses.
Jane’s off mailing a legal document and has stopped by Christmasland at the local Wallyworld where we get our fizz-bottles for the SodaStream. Wally world isn’t our favorite for reasons of how they treat their employees, but it’s the closest place for miles and miles where we can get those fizz-bottles, and they also house my optometrist, so we do go there now and again.
I’m finally feeling better. I nearly threw myself into a relapse yesterday, out there in the iris beds, but today Jane insisted I stay in and get well. It’s been offically 2 weeks now since I began to come down with this stuff. So it’s about darned time!
Yupper, boredom can lead to relapse, and then there are those of us who will work ourselves sick in the first place.
We live in a condo, so my “winterizing” consists of (1) shutting off the outside water (front and back) and letting the pipes drain and (2) draining whatever hoses I’ve used. Because we’ll be selling our unit next year, I’m spending some time sprucing up the outside plantings. A front-end loader full of wood chips and bark (about 3 cu. yards) in the back of a pickup truck (or, in my case, whatever you can pack into your car) is only $10 at the city mulching site, so a few trips there should yield a nice thickness of mulch that will last into next year. They have several mulch “hills”, each about 40 feet tall – impressive!
There I am, a relatively tiny figure, manually filling up my bags with mulch, while the huge earthmoving equipment and trucks rumble around. The drivers all smile and wave, so it’s a very friendly place.