My repair to the burst irrigation line are complete. Today I did the first pressure testing and so far everything is holding. Here’s what it looks like now:
The new curb stop valve is at the bottom of that grey pipe on the left. That’s there so I can still operate valve after I’ve filled in the hole. I added a second ball valve and a drain valve. This gives me better winterization because I can now drain the line and blow it out with compressed air in the fall. With no water in the line, it won’t burst next year. This new manifold is about a foot below grade and will be covered with an irrigation valve box.
I still need to finish refilling the hole as the bottom shown here is still about two feet down. I’ll do that as my back allows. That’s it for this week. If you need me, I’ll be looking for my heating pad.
The next song on my writing play list is Hallelujah written by Leonard Cohen and seemingly covered by almost everyone. It’s never been a raging commercial success, but it is a moving, poetic and interesting song. The lyrics start out religious with lines talking about king David and Bathsheba and Samson and Delilah. Then it moves into a section about failed romance. All throughout the constant refrain of Hallelujah is more of a lament than a celebration. The word hallelujah is transformed from a statement of joy to more of a symbol of our failings as Cohen uses the phrased, “… a broken Hallelujah,” to indicate times when things haven’t gone as expected.
If you’re into poetry, likely you’ve heard of Leonard Cohen. He’s a poet, writer and singer-songwriter. Hallelujah, is his most famous song, but he struggled with it for a long time. While the central themes seem solid, in fact Cohen struggled with this song and wrote hundreds of different lines and many different versions of the song have been recorded. The song first released on the 1984 album Various Positions. It didn’t do well. It wasn’t until 1991 when John Cale released a version of the song the song that it started to get some recognition.
Cohen performed the song on tour, often as the last song of the show. Hallelujah got a big boost when it was featured in the movie Shrek in 2001 where it was used as a lament when Shrek’s love interest is taking off to marry the king. Toward the end of Cohen’s life the song was being covered more and heard by more people.
I didn’t encounter the song until 2016 when the a cappella group Pentatonix released their cover of the song. It’s amazing and just best if you listen to it since it’s so hard to describe:
I don’t exactly recall how I found it, but I think a friend posted it on FaceBook and later I found it on YouTube. I’ve listened to a number of different covers of the song, including a few by Cohen himself, but it’s always been the Pentatonix version I like the best and what I put on my writing play list.
Like all the songs on my play list, Hallelujah, transports my mind to deeper thought and reflection. The lyrics are moving and enigmatic. Cohen reduces the story of David and Bathsheba to a few lines saying, “You saw her bathing on the roof / Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya.” I’ve heard sermons going on for 20, 30 minutes on this story, but Cohen is able to reduce the whole event to just a couple of lines of poetry. The density of his poetry gets me thinking every time I listen to this one.
Then there is Pentatonix’s musicianship and extraordinary vocal skills. They mix their parts so you have not only good harmony, but also the underlying bass lines and percussion. By the time you’ve finished listening to their cover, you’ve forgotten that the whole production was just vocal. Also the music video they have on YouTube just adds to the overall feeling and emotion that Hallelujah generates.
So far this week, it’s snowed and rained. No freezing temps for most of the week and looking out my office window, it looks like I need to mow the lawn this weekend so here’s everything I know about lawn care:
Song lyrics to sing while mowing: “I fought the lawn, but the lawn won.”
Sign on the lawn at the rehab center: “Keep off the grass.”
My description of a perfect summer day: Sun is shining, there is a light breeze, birds are singing, there are steaks on the BBQ and the lawn mower is broken.
My neighbor has a service that brings out a cow to eat the grass short. It’s a lawn moo-er service.
I asked the Hulk for some advice about my lawn. I know, but he does have green fingers …
A friend of mine just got taken to the hospital. He was out on his lawn looking at caterpillar tracks when he was suddenly run over by a bulldozer.
The police said that the burglars used grass to pick a lock at a house they robed. I don’t know, that evidence may have been planted.
I had an old lawn mower I wanted to get rid of, so I put it at the end of my driveway with a “FREE” sign on it. Someone took the sign but left the mower. I should have been more specific.
I just saw a man slumped over his lawn mower crying. I asked him if there was anything I could do. He said he’d be fine, he was just going through a rough patch.
I had to buy a new lawn mower. The old one just wasn’t cutting it.
What did the monkey say when he got his tail caught in a lawn mower? It won’t be long now.
It’s been awhile since I updated you on the irrigation project. Let’s just say it’s been a slow project. First there’s been a lot of digging:
This is the pile of dirt I’ve dug out. For scale, the pile is sitting on top of a 4×8 foot sheet of old plywood. The back panel is two feet tall. That’s about 1.5 cubic yards of dirt dug by hand with these:
I spent about an hour a day digging (that’s about all an old guy can do) which a couple of weeks. Once I got to the old valve I was able to figure out what kind of replacement valve to get and I had to order that. That took a few days, but by last Saturday I’d replaced the valve and start to stub out the new line.
Here’s what it looks like at the bottom of the hole:
It might be hard to see as it’s three feet down in the hole, but the brass thing is the new curb stop valve with a new PVC line attached. The line on the right is the upstream line that leads to the irrigation system. I’ve got more plumbing work and had hoped to finish that this week, but this happened this morning:
No more plumbing is happening until that all dries up.
And that’s how it goes here in the high desert. It was 80 on Saturday and this morning it was 32 and I was worried I might need to go put blankets on my new valve. So now I’m just going to catch up on some writing until the ground dries out a little. If you need me, I’m waiting for the snow to melt.
