Simple Confusion

After a week or so of trying, I finally fixed my pulse sprinkler. Now these sprinklers are a pretty basic type of garden equipment, and have probably been around for a long time. Clearly, they were invented long before the time of modern plastics, as the best ones are made of brass.

It turned out that a pretty large chunk of rust had made its way from the Perkins plumbing system into the sprinkler head. But this is not what I thought was the problem.

Being a community garden, implements are often shared. When the sprinkler stopped returning, I assumed that someone sharing the sprinkler had clogged the linkage up with dirt. Mislead by my assumptions, I disassembled and reassembled the sprinkler countless times to no avail.

It's interesting how our assumptions about our community can mislead us.

After a few days of mulling the problem about, I came back at it with fresh eyes and tried new solutions. Initially I experienced no more success.

Then I saw the little nozzle nut staring me in the face. I cracked it open and there it was—a piece of bright maroon rust jammed in the opening. Simple as that. And nothing to do with my garden community.

Just a random physical event.

These old sprinklers are simple, almost elegant in their design. Yet when things go haywire, it’s amazing how our complicated brains can cause us to stumble around in the dark.

Simple, yet confusing to the easily mislead mind.