MARRIED LANDSCAPE WINNING TACTICS

 

 

We play a game at my house called, “I’ll hire the ___ if you can’t do it.”

 

I like to think it comes with being married to the right person, a visionary.

 

Fill in the blank with electrician, plumber, carpenter, landscape crew. As long as husband isn’t on the list there’s still a chance.

 

It’s the last one, landscape, that’s most fun; the others take more risk and reward. And fun means dirty, dangerous, and hard.

 

Landscaping is more challenging in ways that include plumbing, electrical, and some woodwork, but carpentry might be stretching things.

 

Applying wood to the landscape comes in two categories: border or support. Cut some wood, nail it together and stand back.

 

The electrical part of landscaping is like the spark of being married. Chop that cord and it’s a dark, dark, time. So don’t cut it in married life or yard life.

 

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The best way to prevent the dark ages is doing any digging with your own hands. Others stick a shovel in the dirt and stand on the blade. What’s it hitting? Probably a rock, so pogo the shovel on down.

 

Either a rock or an electrical line, and in a mature yard there’s plenty of buried wire. Hired help can chop lines accidentally and no one knows until later. Then they don’t know where the break is.

 

The expert yard tech takes to excavation like a dentist on his first solo root canal. Very cautious. Instead of hammering away like a coal miner on a big seam, the shovel turns into a delicate instrument.

 

If you navigate planting season without cutting wires, you deserve a promotion. And if the lights were a complicated installation that never worked right? Still, don’t cut any wires if you want to stay married.

 

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The plumbing part of landscaping is actually called irrigation. A plumber isn’t licensed for irrigation, and an irrigation guy can’t do any plumbing. That’s the law, but you and I both know these two water gods can do it all if they’re licensed in one or the other.

 

But only with friends.

 

With the heat rising, yards with sprinkler systems that get turned off each winter get turned back on. Break a pipe with the water off and never know. Break it with the big blue valve on and the flooding starts. Since the pipes are buried, break an empty pipe and the fun waits until it’s full.

 

I had a yard guy break a pipe inside a rock wall once. They were moving more than rock that day. I noticed a flow of water coming out of the wall. It looked like an oozing mineral spring, except it stopped when the timer moved the water to the next station.

 

Station? A zoned watering system keeps water pressure up by breaking the yard down into manageable bits. Six to be exact. The green lids you see in the dirt are zone covers.

 

Stick a shovel into a zone pipe that’s on and you’ll spring a leak. If it’s not on, it leaks later. Married people know more about leaks and later.

 

Yard crews pick and dig and scrape the ground. Unless you have a map for them, somethings going to break.

 

Another sprinkler pro come out, he and his young assistant. They were auditing my system for efficiency. At $100 an hour. To help out I mapped the zones, flagged and exposed every sprinkler in the property. Like I was paying $100 an hour for a shovel.

 

Instead of dragging it out clod by clod, I make short work of them. Or for them. They were impressed, but disappointed it wasn’t a longer job.

 

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The married part of landscaping is reaping what you sow. Plant bitter memories and you’ll have bitter fruit. No one likes bitter fruit.

 

Ignore directions and you’ll have a failed yard drifting toward disarray. Ignore being married the same way and it’s heading for the same dump.

 

What’s a married man to do? Especially a newly married couple? This comes from real life testing:

 

“I want to talk about the plan,” she said one morning.

 

“If it’s the same plan we made last night, we talked it out,” I said.

 

“I want to know if you can do it, or if I need to hire someone,” she said.

 

(‘Hire someone’ is code for Go Time.)

 

“How about if I do the work, then you can hire someone to redo it. Or hire someone now and I’ll redo their work when they screw up,” I said.

 

“So you don’t want to talk about it?” she said.

 

“Of course I do honey, but let’s start on the same page. I’ll tell you what I understand so far. Let me give you the steps we both agreed on,” I said, and repeated the steps.

 

“That sounds right,” she said.

 

“I’m going out,” I said, heading for the bedroom door.

 

“I’ll see you later today,” she said.

 

“What?” I yelled from the front door?

 

“I’ll see you later today,” she said.

 

I quick stepped back to her room and said, “Did you say kiss your wife goodbye?” (Thanks Karla)

 

“What?”

 

“Get in here for a big wet one.”

 

Being married and landscaping are easy if you follow the John Wooden rule. He is the famous UCLA basketball coach who owned the Sixties.

 

1. Compliment

2. Correct

3. Compliment

 

Then hope for the best, but plan for changes. The kiss probably works better in marriage than it does in basketball, or landscaping.

 

For example:

 

The yard looks good, but I’ll make it better, then it will look great. Another kissable moment from boomerpdx.

Moowah.