Sprinkler Two Boogaloo

So after my sprinkler travails, I was ready to plant, right?

WRONG!

The dang things were all wonky and sputtering and not all of them would turn on.

Sigh...

I blamed the controls, which the previous crack-heads house-flippers

had buried in a hole at the bottom of my hilly yard.

To replace the controls, I spent an afternoon crouched over a small, muddy hole

earning myself a tramp-stamp sunburn...

as I clawed at the dirt like Andy Dufresne and his five hundred yards of poo, until...

SUCCESS!

I finally got the thing uncovered!

NOW I was ready to replace the controls and get started planting, right?

NOPE.

Because the next day, after I turned off the water and cut out the old controls...

the water kept trickling out of the open pipes.

Augh!

I couldn't glue the new controls in,

AND I couldn't turn the water back on for the house until I could get the water stopped!

After unsuccessfully trying something out from the internets,

I plodded across the street to ask my neighbor his advice.

(I have found with projects like this that dudes over sixty are an invaluable resource.)

He said there was a tool I could buy that would help me turn off the water at the street,

and  he was indeed right.

So I turned off the water at the street to the whole house,

because the flippers, with their cheapskate ways, 

had not put in this simple sprinkler shut-off:

Yes, for the price of a vente Starbucks, I could have avoided all this water DRAMA.

But I ponied up the four bucks, attached the shut-off,

turned the water back on for the house and left it to dry overnight.

Time to plant yet?

Noooo, I still had to install the NEW controls.

The next day I got up and blee blah bloo I'm dying from the boredom of this story

I started figuring out the configuration of pipes so that the controls would be

above-ground, not below-ground.

This part was actually pretty fun. It's like I was playing with big ole TinkerToys.

Though I had one horrifying moment, when I accidentally touched THIS guy:

EEK!

The end results were all convoluted and reminded me of the old "Pipes" screensaver...

But I did it!

I filled up the hole with sand and gravel, 

and got to planting!

After three days I only transformed about a sixth of the yard,

and the state of my nails (after two days of scrubbing) 

may lead to me having to turn in my Girl Card...

... but I'm one step closer to a low-water, lawn-free yard!

Woo!