Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

There’s very little to be said when things take this long (gestures Sonofspamingly at my B Favre area). Oh and the trees in the back are dead. More on that later. Anyways, here’s the update on my irrigation water since our 7/9/2024 post. As you’ll recall, I had my work all done and then the feed pipe broke under my neighbor’s driveway during the test irrigation run back in, what, May?

No real good stories to this stuff other than, never in a million years would I have guessed that the system pipe would fail under the only lot between me and the standpipe. So we’re always learning. I don’t have any photos of the work because I had stuff to do that day. Best I understand, there was an old repair that failed and, I don’t know, it’s not on my property and it’s fixed — who cares?

So we got on for the water delivery in mid-August.

And it went off beautifully. The pipe fix under my neighbor’s driveway held — which is was important to water utility in order to, you know, keep getting water. Valve rotation was really nice too. Just a feel-good kind of experience.

Front yard got a good drink (as my mom would say after leaving me to water her plants when I wasn’t a reliable option to water the plants but that’s before they had those glass bulbs that do it) and is also one deep bitch.

So it would seem we did well. Almost….too well, some people might say….

Too well enough that we also flooded the street. As shown above, the dirt berm wasn’t high enough so the water level breached the front yard onto my driveway — which is about the only thing I’m not allowed to with the water (waste/release it onto public right of way). No big deal. Just called the dude back out, showed him these images, and they rolled out with a pickup full of dirt, about three sprinkler risers, and a tamper to repair the berm.

It’s two weeks between water deliveries in the summer so you get the repair done then wait twelve days. Well, I got no passion, I got no patience and I hate waitin’¹ so I went to Hawaii and surfed.

And it worked. So the irrigation is fixed and functional. I’ve been taking water on schedule because, (1) I paid for it; (2) it’s my right; (3) the soil is super dry and super caliche (expansive clays with high limestone content) so it’s sucking down the water and cools the property decently for a couple full days afterwards; and (4) we switch to once-a-month through the winter so everybody getting ready with a good drink.

Now these trees are dead. Basically everything in the back. If you had asked me, they were probably good as dead the day that first irrigation delivery busted the pipe and shut down the primary water source for these newly-transplanted trees back in May, before another record summer gripped the Valley of the Sun.

But it turns out the nursery dude was like, “well, I mean, quite a few factors went into these trees dying.² But if you look down here by the base, they got some infection at the nursery so they’re gonna die within 16 months anyways and you’re in 90 day warranty.” Which I thought was fucking crazy but I imagine selling trees to people in May is kind of setting yourself up for this bullshit³. I’m sure it’s worked into the price or whatever I don’t care. But I will say good things about you in an anonymous review on the internet, if that’s what you want, tree guy.

My tree guy seems to be pretty reasonable and wisely offered to schedule a couple follow up visits to see how the next batch does. Those don’t come for another month and weather is just now heading under 100 so I’m sort of just letting whatever grow. It’s too late in the summer to do summer Saint Augustine and too early to seed or sod for winters perennial ryegrass. So even when everything is fixed, we’re still in waiting mode.

So sounds like something different by end of October.

ⁱ Ho, get your a** in
² Even stupid people understand trees need water in summer.
³ Seems to reason I should have made sure the irrigation works before ever receiving the trees too. I assumed the system would work and took the trees before water. Now I’m sitting here in late summer taking water to a lot with dead trees and no grass. Why didn’t I just take a delivery in early April when I had no trees and no grass? I’m seeing now that this was such a self-inflicted kill-shot to all this. Just something that Bill Belichik would have never been unprepared for. Bill would have called the irrigation utility out at every single stage of the process that didn’t concern them just to make sure that they didn’t say stop and, when the time came, we could cheat everything and come out victorious. Instead, I have a dumb yellow pencil in my beard.