Getting Hosed

Getting Hosed

Our property on our little hilltop is a 2.5 acre trapezoid with several hundred feet of frontage on Quail View Drive (Kim swears she sees a covey of quail quite often on the driveway, but you can’t prove that by me). The property goes more-or-less straight back from the road on both sides, a bit further on the south side than the north, thereby creating the trapezoidal shape. In the front, the hill goes up from the road and in the back it goes downhill about as steeply or a bit more. I am just guessing here, but I would say it is a 10 degree slope in the front and a fifteen degree slope in the back. While we have some nice specimen plantings of cacti and succulents in the back and the gardeners keep the rest of the property in the back well groomed and cut down, the back is more of a slope that gets viewed out over from the deck and is only rarely walked on or used for any sort of playground. In fact, on one less graded corner to the north we have “planted” (guess who did it for me….yep, it was Jeff) a lovely, life-sized metal sculpture of a Joshua Tree cactus which came from Desert Steel (again, thanks, Jeff for finding this source). All of the famous award-winning cactus gardens (compliments of the prior owner) are on the front slope between the house and road.

I will not wax too eloquent about these lovely cactus gardens, but suffice it to say that they were featured in Sunset Magazine, the only periodical of the great West to which we subscribe. The scale and variety of the cactus plantings are amazing. In fact, there is a seven foot high, six foot diameter terra-cotta pot in the front that looks very appropriately sized even though I am told it was delivered by a big old crane before we bought this place. I also recently learned from the $425 septic cleaning I had done (something that needs to be done every 3-5 years I am told) that the septic tank and attendant leach fields are spread out in the front hillside under that gigantic cactus garden. I’m guessing that adequate fertilizer is not a problem with that cactus garden and it might give rise to that healthy scale I mentioned.

One of the funny things about our property is that it is smaller than the property on either side of us and yet was not the first house built up here. That strikes me as strange since you would imagine that someone building on a hilltop would make sure that they were on the very top of that hill and not next to a lot that was higher. And yet, here we are, on the very top and our neighbor to the south, who clearly opted for the “better” position with views facing the ocean failed to appreciate how much better this view was and never really designed their house to take glorious advantage of the ocean views. Go figure. We very much like the woman who lives there and since she and her husband (a great and famous oral surgeon who passed away a few years ago) built the house, we keep those thoughts to ourself for the most part.

What I don’t keep to myself and have lots of fun with is that that neighbor’s mailbox is sited on our property. It’s just a few feet, but if I wanted to (which I absolutely do not) I could force her to move it. I also just learned from Winston across the street that the mysterious neighbor on our north side built his driveway to impinge on the corner of our property. The prior owners of our house would not have made a fuss, but the mystery neighbors were apparently rude about it and so my predecessor supposedly brought suit and prevailed with some sort of settlement achieved. I presume that means he now has a legal right to his driveway and my title search and survey did not show anything untoward, so I assume it is a settled issue. But what’s up with that? Both neighbors have more land and they still have to tuck in that tight to my property lines? Luckily, I feel we have plenty of land and I have no intention of making a fuss about boundary lines unless I find that power lines and boundary lines got somehow confused….

When we bought the house the very nice German-descent cactus-lady had only one plea for us, that we not over-water the cacti. When we were doing our initial settling in, we had an abundance of help from both Jeff & Lisa and my sister Kathy & Bennett. Kathy decided all on her own (did I mention she is my older sister?) that I needed to revamp my irrigation system and start watering everything within sprinkling range. We stopped that after a few excess weeding issues arose, but the gardeners pre-positioned about a dozen hoses at various spigots set out throughout the property (presumably part of the irrigation system). The growth is so big and thick that the gardeners just leave those hoses coiled up in the garden and they are mostly hidden from view while being readily available when needed. I have owned this home now for eight years and I can’t ever remember buying a hose (while I’ll bet Kathy bought a few for me way back then). The point is, all those hoses are well-aged. But hoses don’t really get old do they?

Recently and especially during this lockdown, I find myself more prone to Facebook clickbait buying than before. I saw a patio crack weeding tool that I just had to have. I have bought a Milwaukee Tool battery powered drill and driver duo and a matching string trimmer. I feel like that dweeby guy at Bloomingdales buying the mega Swiss Army knife, just in case he is ever lost in the north woods. I have tools just in case Handy Brad or Juventino or Jeff are unavailable for some home project I desperately need to do. Well, one day not too long ago I saw an ad for a lightweight expanding hose with a built-in super-sprayer nozzle. The beauty of this beauty is its lightweight nature and the fact that it shrivels up when not engorged with water. That means it is light and easy to handle. I have notices that my eight-year + old hoses are very industrial and therefore durable, but heavy. I bought a new flex hose…but they had a deal and I went for two extra…and that bred an ever better deal…and I do have lots of spigots, so I ended up maxing out at eight of these hoses. The last big offer was to upgrade from 25-footer to 50-footer, but I was too smart for that old trick and decided that was a scam. I stayed with the 25-footers.

When they arrived I quickly realized how short a 25-foot hose is. You really need a 50-footer or more. But the good thing about hoses is that they are like Christmas lights and you can string them together. Indeed, I found that the ideal solution was to simply add the new flex hoses onto the end of the big old industrial hose. That way, I could go out and sprinkle the flowers as needed with no heavyweight muss or fuss. Juventino would still have to wrestle with the old industrial hoses, but he probably likes that. I was very pleased with my new hose program. I even found that I really only needed five of my eight since I was not about to wander into the middle of that cactus garden for any imaginable idea (that’s MY version of the great north woods). So I proudly made a gift of one of the slick new hoses to each of gardener Jeff and gardener Kathy. Jeff was amused and Kathy said she had four of them at home but would gladly take another. So much for impressing either of them.

Today Kim came in soaking wet and asked that I change the old hose by the front of the house since it squirts when turning it on or off. That damn old hose was leaking at the spigot. Luckily I have one flex hose left and I will be checking to see if I can attach two 25-footer flex hoses together to solve Kim’s wet pants problem. If not, I may have to buy a 50-footer, which means I will probably end up with eight 50-footers. I am beginning to feel like I’m about to get hosed again.