Ouch

Last weekend really hurt. I hurt myself within 1 hour of starting yard work Saturday morning. I pulled up some steel edging, which I thought was fairly easy. After shoveling faster that I probably should have been, by back started hurting me. Not my lower back, as is common doing car work, but mid-back between the shoulder blades. I took an hour break, could hardly move my back, sometime could hardly breathe. But, I felt I had to get back to work to get the backyard done. Surprisingly it did not hurt my back to use the tiller, but I was dreading loading it in the truck by myself. I worked through the pain, and got the back yard done. I took Monday night off, and finished it Tuesday night. I've been really stiff and sore since Saturday, but today I felt a lot better. I know this because I started fast-walking again. For the past few days I've been slowly hobbling around. Today, I feel stronger than usual. I'm really getting tanned. I used sunscreen all weekend, so I didn't burn, and I didn't.

Next step, design the irrigation system and install. I got two designs going, one uses bigger throw sprinklers, 20', and the other uses 8'~10' sprinklers. I'm not convinced that the 20' plan allows for adequate overlap and I'm concerned that it will leave brown spots, then I'd have to dig up the entire yard to put in more sprinklers. I think the other plan give plenty of overlap, but I'm concerned that it is not using big enough sprinklers for the large area and it is a lot of sprinklers. I am going to use multistream heads because they water slower and use less water. Something about using a stream rather than spray lessens the amount of water that is lost to evaporation. Also, the slower watering allows the ground time to absorb the water rather than it mini-flash flood off the lawn. I am also going to use a - I won't say un-popular because it has a bad conatation, but it is not popular- type of grass called Reveille. It is supposed to use a lot less water than kentucky blue grass and tolerate heat better. It was developed by TAMU. One local shop has said that once established, in my town, it only needs to be watered once per week! Hopefully between the mulitstream heads and the Reveille grass, my lawn won't be such a big water-hog. I had fescue in the front lawn and to keep it green, mow once per week, it doubled by water usage in the summer. It would be a substantial water per sq foot savings to only triple my usage in the summer over winter usage with the new lawn, since it is so much bigger. Time will tell....