He rigged the old irrigation tubing to a pump line that drew directly from the pond, feeding it toward the mulch border where most of the shortcut traffic passed. He checked the valves, replaced the rotted pieces, and tested the flow. The water came out cold—and faintly murky, just enough to stain a shirt or leave streaks on expensive gear.
At the far end, he installed a motion-activated sensor—nothing fancy, just a deer deterrent he’d used once to keep raccoons away from the tomatoes. When triggered, it opened the valve for four seconds, spraying a fan of high-pressure water from nozzles carefully mounted beneath the flower bed’s edge.