Gardening at last

After 2 and half very long years of no gardening, I'm back in the saddle again!  However, it's not so much gardening as demolishing.  Our neighbors commented that I was "taming the jungle at last" and they were not exaggerating one bit.  I will show you an example...
 

This is our back patio pergola and it is completely covered with ivy.  Ahhh!  Do you see how the boards are swaying??  It has caught every pine needle and tree debris for many MANY years.  I got after this a few days ago with many tools of torture including sheers, bypass pruners, and loppers.  The result has been this....

A complete and utter annihilation of all source of nutrients.  Victory is mine!  Now all I have to do is wait till it dries out and loosens its grasp of the pergola rafters. 

The ivy isn't the only problem, no no.  The sprinkler system has been the bain of my existence since moving in.  First off, we had no idea how to set the timer and then when we did figure it out we had no idea how long to run them for.  The real beef of the issue came upon us this past weekend when we tackled the leaky heads.  Five heads were consistently leaking and we thought that if we replaced them all would be fixed.  No easy feat but it seemed straight forward enough, so off to Lowes we went, full of pep in our step.  We started this day at 9 in the morning.... after 4 hours of digging and replacing and more digging and a little dash of PVC repair we thought "YES, this is it!"  We turned the water back on and ..... drum roll please..... STILL leaking!  So back to Lowes we go (third trip of the day).  VERY long story short, we figure out that it's the diaphragm in the zone valve.  Lots of bruised knuckles, egos, and knees later we fixed the leak.  We now have a new and wonderful understanding of sprinkler systems, our knowledge is growing every day!  Home ownership is an ever evolving test of one's knowledge and most definitely a test of patience.

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