Snakes in Tall Grass

My neighbor and I have been doing a lot of running in the mornings over the past several months.   We’ve done this in the past, but I think we’ve ramped up our frequency and daily distance since the beginning of spring.

During the early weeks of spring I would look at my phone as I got up and check what time sunrise would be.   I love sunrise.  This is an interesting comment coming from someone who would have told you the thought of being up so early as to see sunrise ten years ago would have brought on shivers of horror.   “No one should be up that early!” I can hear myself saying.  Well now I am and now I love it.

But back to the sunrise thing.   I would look at the time of sunrise and watch each week as the time would be earlier and earlier in the morning.   This was nice, because that meant less time we’d be running in the dark.   It also likely meant warmer and warmer weather had arrived.

At this point, even several weeks past summer solstice, we’re running barely in the dark, even starting at five-thirty in the morning.   What has changed though is the amount of snakes in tall grass we’re running past.

Let me explain.   I don’t mean real snakes and the grass in the yards around the neighborhood is for the most part only ankle high.   But these grasses need to be hydrated to remain lush and green and that means lots of sprinklers running lots of water on them.

At this point in my post I think of my sister-in-law who lives in San Francisco and has serious water usage restrictions.    We, on the other hand, live in the humid south-east and water is plentiful.   In this way, we are quite fortunate.   Unless you have frizzy hair.  But that’s another issue related to humidity, and the South can’t be held entirely to blame for unmanageable hair.

The way the sprinkler systems work is they have zones.   Each zone turns on for a certain number of minutes and sprays that area of the lawn or bushes or plants.   You can’t turn them all on at once or there would be a water pressure issue, so each watering zone has to take it in turn.    It’s also common to do the watering at a time when water usage is low, such as very early in the morning.   Watering when the sun is up and grass is heated makes for less absorption of the grass.  

This means our running time coincides with the watering cycles of dozens of yards around our neighborhood.    As the systems move from one zone to the next, the water lines are filled with water and the air is pushed out as water starts to spew or spray out.     To me, this sounds like hissing snakes in tall grass, happening again and again all around our neighborhood.

The hotter it gets as the summer goes on, the more sprinkler action we’ve been seeing.    I don’t mind the sprinklers.   I think I’m going to miss them when summer is over and I have to go back to running in the dark in the cold.

The Big Boy Update:  My son observed this morning, “when you yawn, your eyes get wet.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Have we made it past the wet pants phase?  My daughter for the last few weeks has made it through almost every day in a single pair of pants.   She’s had a few near accidents and a bit of leakage, but not the rampant, not caring, wet pants of a while back.

Fitness Update:  Nine miles this morning with a lot of sprinklers hissing at us as we ran around the neighborhood.