It's a Pest Picking a Pop-Up

It was a slow day and one of my non-work days. You know, the kind of satisfying slow when all the regular chores have been done in the garden and around the house, you can't be bothered going for a drive, daily exercises have been clocked up, and there's nothing to pick up from the supermarket.  I don't know why I decided to check, but, somehow or other, the grass had been looking a bit dry and yellow.  We were nearing the end of winter and almost into spring here in sunny Queensland, and the sun hadn't as yet got high enough in the sky to start scorching and withering the goodness out of the garden. I'd just spread out a load of top dressing across the lawn areas a few days before and, surprisingly, it was still quite dry in places and hadn't dispersed its nutrients into the carpet of couch beneath.  In fact, some of the front lawn areas were quite dry.  

I checked the settings on the automatic sprinkler system and they were all exactly as they should be for the time of year.  Three zones around the house, all set to come on, one after the other in series, at 4 am, 4.15 am and 4.30 am, so there would be plenty time for the water to soak in before the heat of the day started the evapo-transpiration cycle back into the atmosphere.  Also, plenty time before any of the neighbours would start walking their spritely yappy pooches along the paved footpath bordering the street.

Better just put cycle number one on manual and see what's going on. Well, blow me down with a feather if there's only one pop-up sprinkler making an appearance (when there should be three, or was it four?), and this solitary ejector only giving out a half hearted squirt instead of a full blown spray of life-giving irrigation. Now where are the others located again?  The above photo is quite misleading as it was taken after I'd successfully (and eventually) found all four front strip sprinklers, marked them on the concrete with paint, measured up and made a dimensioned drawing for next time. But, for now, I was scratching my head trying to remember where those pesky sprinkle heads were. 

The grass had grown quite thick since I last maintained the heads.  Couch has really tough roots that spread laterally, and it only takes a few growing across the top of the pop-ups to prevent them from, you know, popping up. What's more, a few minutes (or thirty) on my hands and knees, searching through a carpet of tangled, organic, interwoven, twisted, twine-like and tensile tough, camouflaged covering of roots, with fingers already weary and cut, was threatening to dampen my quest for buried treasure.  

Next, I set-to with a large screwdriver, prodding gingerly through the fibrous weave of entanglement, hoping to meet resistance on a sprinkle head or three. Such was my difficulty in penetrating this concentrated carpet of pierce-averse hostile greenery (or rather yellowish greenery) that I then graduated to a long blunt steel rod which I hammered through the couch zone and into the underlying clay with ever increasing frustration and ever decreasing zeal.

Having by now set out an odd arrangement of trowels, cutters, folding seat-come-kneeling-pad, spade, pegs, steel rod, club hammer, permanent marker pen and spade, I was approached by one of the neighbours, keen to find out what I was doing on my hands and knees, apparently worshipping my garden at much closer quarters than is usual for me or, indeed, usual for anyone of sound mind to be doing.

After a brief pause to resist (uselessly as it transpired) from firing off a tirade of expletives, fuelled by my exasperation and annoyance at being thwarted by the tangles of nature, I took a few calming deep breaths (thanks to those early morning Tai Chi and Gigong YouTube classes) and explained that I couldn't, for the life of me, ... two-three-four-five ... find these ... goddam, pesky, *!*!!**!, sprinkler heads (nothing like a flurry of abuse to settle the mind, particularly when it predictably echoes the manufactured calm before the eventual storm).  A sympathetic chat then ensued, when, almost as an afterthought, or even an appendix to the main discussion, 'neighbour-two-doors-down' came out with a, "Have you thought of using a metal detector?"

This set me scrambling to check the permanent above-ground sprays.  Yep, old mate neighbour had something there.  In the middle of each sprinkler there's a stainless steel screw, albeit minute, but also there must be a steel spring beneath each mechanism for the in-ground sprinklers, to enable them to do their pop-up magic (when not, of course, entangled in a nest of steely-tough couch roots).

Later that day, tools all tucked away, I went hell for leather feverishly Googling 'metal detector' technology. Eventually, lo and behold, what should pop up (metaphorically rather than irrigationally) but Metal Detector Planet's "Finding sprinkler heads and valves with a metal detector - the ultimate guide". I was immediately hooked on the ultimate solution provided by this ultimate guide, not only for relocating irrationally resisting pop-up irrigation outlets, but the possibility of finding a treasure trove buried within our bountiful and beautiful beaches, accidentally discarded (or carelessly lost) by a flotilla of visiting tourists.  Wedding rings, bangles, bracelets, necklaces, coins of various realms, would all succumb to the magic of modern technology.  All I had to do was invest a mere several hundred dollars and I'd solve my garden drought and, almost certainly, have a new and all encompassing hobby to boot.

Luckily, the voice of economic reasoning (aka my better half) piped up with, "Have you considered hiring one to see how it goes, first"? My wife has inherited the benefits of my Scots upbringing, despite being Indonesian (and hence, rather obviously, not Scots), probably having listened to many decades of my tirades on the dangers of unnecessarily purchasing things we don't need or, indeed, of spending money fullstop.

The next day then, there I was, standing front and centre, mid-lawn, with this magic circular (hired) wand, waving it across the grass like a remote appendage to my arm, and expectation written across my face, like a pregnant pause waiting for expulsive expression.  The device was magnificent and I was a flurry of action, as I sprayed with marker paint, prodded with screw drivers and dug with trowels after each new beep.  I even got into the sweep, beep, dig, repeat rhythm ...

After several false starts, however, and a gathering of various odd round holes and mini--trenches, it became obvious, even to me, in my stupor of elated and blind fervour, that something was wrong.

It transpired that this marvel of modern technology was picking up the steel toe caps on my work boots, the tools around me, the reinforcing steel in the footpath alongside the grass, and even the odd rusty nail, but it steadfastly refused to home in on the smallest of stainless steel screws and underlying springs, no matter how I reset its sensitivity, its capability to detect either all metals or various separate metals, and it's general noise level.  I even Googled the model number of the non-sprinkler-finding device, located and downloaded the manual, so that I could fiddle with (except what I primarily set out to find) and, much though I hate to admit it, had a heap of fun along the way, I did establish, however, that my neighbours are very patient with a balding and tad overweight former Scotsman, who spent virtually one whole afternoon with a weird device that makes irregular and varied beeping noises.

I eventually tried it on the above ground water emitters and found, much to my chagrin, that each incy-wincy, teeny-weeny, stainless, threaded-head, machiny could only be picked up with the detector scanner at closer than 100 mm above it.  When below ground, in non-pop-up mode, however, it later transpired that said threaded head machiny was at least 200 mm from the top of the grass and hence too far below the detector's scanner for the tiny trusty tightener to be found.  The bottom line, at least in this instance, was that I had Buckley's chance of finding the hidden and pop-up-resisting heads using this metal detecting mode of magic.

As I commenced wiping down the various and now clay-covered tools I had been using, I switched the front sprinklers on to manual once again, hoping, one last time, to see possible sources for the seepages of water emanating through the grass roots and across the top of the adjacent footpath concrete. 

Now every dog has its day, and every diviner his or her non-alcoholic 'aqua vitae' (or in a former Scotsman's case, uisge-beatha), and so, imagine my surprise when I suddenly heard a bubbling noise, and then another, and then another, as, one by one, the missing three pop-ups, actually commenced popping up.   

"Thar she blows!"
It had suddenly turned into a 'Whale of a Day'.

Now whether or not my various probings and chopping of roots had loosened the heads, or whether they had needed a bit of thumping and coaxing (from hammer on rod, etc) or whether it was incredibly down to the psychedelic sonic waves sent out by the metal detector scaring the sh*t out of these reticent pop-ups, I guess I'll never know.  I just trust in Mother Gaia for small mercies and happy endings.

Nevertheless, the moral of this particular story has surely got to be one of the following:

Now I gotta cut loose, 
Rootloose, 
Pick off the pop-up screws.A Chicago teenager moves to Queensland and attempts to lift the ban on irrigation.

Liberty, Greenery, Gadgetry.
The French Revolution returned the people to their grass roots.

They may take our lawns, but they will never take our pop-ups.
Scots wha hae wi' Wallace ... mowed the lawn.

If you cut loose a few good roots you'll eventually get ejection.
A root by any other name ... is still a root.

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When not researching the weird or the wonderful, the comical or the cultured, the sinful or the serious, I chase my creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of my travels on my website at:

http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.