Being Jane and tales of labor day

Tarzan has been missing so missus spent the weekend being Jane. Cutting bushes, laying paths, a new sprinkler system, raised bed and the ususal fall stuff, mulching-composting and planting bulbs.
Labor day is very American holiday, Monday off to make the last long weekend of the summer. Schools start after labor day, but way back from my childless days, labor day has been about last labor intensive projects of the year. Such projects involve dirt, rocks, beams , power tools etc and ofcouse a week long administration advil post adventure.
1998 my first ever intensive labor day, my friend asks,
so what are you doing this labor day?
I have renter a rototiller, I plan on re-sodding the back yard.
My dear friend V has since learnt, that I am not kidding.
I have laid concrete pathways, build arbors, painted the house, build raised beds, re-planted, installed water features, built Japanese gardens, installed sprinkler systems, deleted trees and bushes and ofcourse, re-sodded the back yard. This year was relatively less adventurous, apart from the installing the sprinklers, there wasn't much of technical difficulty. Mostly it was wheel barrowing the landscape rock to raise the retaining wall of the raised bed, placing the sprinkler pipes in place, new plantings, taking out some 10 year old ( and very well entrenched bushes) and mulching. I also placed some landscape spotlights( the solar panel kind). The yard doesn't look much yet, just kinda large and clean, but at night the lights light up the place well.
The sprinkler system has been a huge fight for me. I live in the pacific northwest, it rains nine months a year here, why should I need a sprinkler system? I don't care that my yard turns brown and crispy by the time July ends. I don't care much about the lawn, it comes back like the neighborhood cat, every year.
But after my third clematis Montana died this summer, I have been thinking. The arbor has been there for three years and the hydrangeas look puny, the the honeysuckle is on its last legs, the wisteria is doing great, but my darling clematis is dead again. I have a south facing back yard, on a quarter of an acre lot, I get all the sun I could hope to get in this place. The down side of the nine months of the rain is that there is so much water on the surface that the plants never root too deeply and then comes the droughty three months of straight sun. Sigh! So, sprinklers it is. But I really need drip system, fine I need to find something that can do both and I am NOT watering the grass.
Now as I sip my reisling and watch my micro-filters spray droplets of water and the laser cut soaker water the roses, I smell the musky end of the summer as the water hits the parched earth . Spring is full of the hope of the elusive Ms Elizabeth showering me with the tiny white-pink blossoms I have been dreaming of ....
Here's hoping!