Maggie's Farm

Our city has been plagued by water main problems in that a major pipe supplying over half the city's water had a spectacular failure in early June. We immediately went on serious water restrictions including no watering outside from a hose. One could, apparently, bring "brown" water from the house to try to keep the garden growing; those who had rain barrels had an additional source of water. So yards - grass, trees, shrubs - w ere not watered. Once the restrictions were lifted, we all tried to remedy the deficit for the yard.
Cue end of August and it is announced that there are a lot more rotten sections in said pipeline than had been realized (they found five more after the initial burst which meant it took longer to let us use water again), so back on serious restrictions. Fortunately, we have had some good rains, wo the trees, shrubs, and grass aren't that unhappy. I await the next round of restrictions, as am convinced the whole pipe is rotten.
When this first happened, we were told this was an unprecedented event as happened in a "hundred-year pipe". turned out very quickly that pipes of that construction in that era have been known for som years to be defective and subject to sudden blowouts, but apparently that message didnt reach our city waterwoks department.