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Mourning Doves multipling

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Every year that we’ve lived here we’ve had mourning doves in the backyard. They always come in pairs.

One will eat at the feeder while the other watches from a tree, a wire, or the roof top. Then they change places.

This year we have four mourning doves. Two are smaller than the others. I have a feeling that they are our regular mourning doves babies. They’re about half the size!

They’re so cute but whenever one of the bigger mourning doves comes along the little one tries to chase it away.

I’ll try to get a photo of the younger ones if I can.

Right now we’ve got one small mourning dove hanging out under a patio chair. We have the sprinkler on and I think it’s drinking water from the cracks in the patio stones design. Smart little things.






Fun with sprinklers – not!

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Chris and I are both experimenting with lawn watering the other night. He was wiped out because he’s covering another persons shift at work for the whole month so he’s getting up at 5 a.m. every day. I’m still not feeling well, what else is new, and that’s made me pretty much useless as far as getting anything done outside goes these days.

So … we pulled out the sprinkler system that we have. We actually haven’t been very happy with lawn sprinklers as none of the ones we’ve purchased in the past have worked very well with our not very powerful water system.

Chris hooked up one of our older small sprinklers after work and the darn thing swung around pathetically and only watered perhaps a 6 foot diameter of lawn and garden. It’s going to be thrown out or perhaps if we have a garage sale it will be one of the items that we put out for that.

So, seeing how bad that sprinkler was and after calculating that it would take about 8 hours to water the front and back Chris got in the car and went to Home depot to get us a new sprinkler.

Miracles of miracles he actually found one that works! The new one has a good range and seems to work well with our low water pressure. It still took about two and a half hours to complete the job but considering that neither of use were up to standing outside in the garden, in the heat, for a minimum of an hour and a half we’re happy.

I still prefer to water my plants by hand. Well with a hose, but you know what I meant! This was better than not watering at all!

Have you found that they don’t seem to make really good sprinklers anymore?

Watering the Garden

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I’m sitting here writing and trying to water my raised flower beds at the same time. It’s not easy doing both at once.

I’ve purchased several sprinklers over the last few years and I haven’t been happy with any of them. Not a one. They either throw the water out too far for my tiny yard, or barely water two or three feet of garden space.

When my parents passed away a couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted some of their sprinklers. So, right now I’m trying out the two I brought back from my parents house.

One is a little round head. It shoots the water upward like a fountain. It only covers at the most about three feet of space. At least with my poor water pressure any way. I used it to water the raspberries. I put it under a few of them and let the water shoot up between the raspberry plants. It seemed to work well enough, but to do all of my raised beds that way will take forever.

So I decided to try out the other sprinkler that I inherited. It has a curved bar that is horizontal. Their are water holes on either end and a couple of water holes in the middle of the bar. The water pressure is supposed to make this thing spin around. Unfortunately when I hooked it up to my hose it spluttered and gurgled and didn’t spin. So I got closer and moved it around myself and then ran away as the water started to pour out the ends.

Spin, spin, splutter, gurgle, spin, spin. Well, that ones covering about three feet of space too, but it’s flooding the flower bed.

I think that if I’m going to continue trying to write and water at the same time it’s going to take all night. Why is it so much faster to water by hand with the hose? Weren’t sprinklers invented so that we could water and do other activities at the same time? Why can’t I find a decent sprinkler?

Do anyone else have trouble with sprinklers?

Have you found one that works for you that you’d care to tell me about?

Ok, well, I’d better go out and move that darn thing over three feet or so.

Update 11:45 p.m. : I gave up with the sprinklers after trying a third one shaped something like the last one … it didn’t spin, it just shot water out the sides. So I ended up hand watering after all that wasted time. Really folks if you know of a good sprinkler that can be used in a small garden let me know!

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