Getting Hosed

Getting Hosed

When you retire, certain things you have taken for granted for many years suddenly come to the fore and take on a much higher level of importance. I’m sure this varies based on where one lives and what interests you are likely to pursue in retirement. But I think its fair to say that retirement has an aspect to it that involves trying to spend more time with nature and for most people (at least those not in the most urban of settings) that means getting into gardening. People ask me all the time if gardening was a lifetime passion for me, mostly because I spend so much time with it now on a daily basis, but also because I have turned gardening into a major activity for myself both in terms of being a physical outlet, but also a creative outlet. Whenever I wake up with little or nothing on the agenda other than some form of exercise, I tend to apply that time to some combination of writing and gardening. That combination seems to properly feed both sides of my soul. There are many tools for gardening, but everyone has their favorites depending on what form of gardening you tend to do.

There are certain things I tend to leave to Joventino during his once every three weeks visits. As I have already established, Joventino can do as much in one day as I can do over three weeks. Recently, I have decided that the Pride of Madeira plants in the front yard have gotten out of control. The damn thing really is more like an invasive weed than a lovely planting. Strangely enough, five years ago when I began this journey, I actually bought a few of the plants and put them in a few spots. One of those was behind the seating area in the Games Area. What were three 10” plants have turned into a 20’x10’ grove that creates a backdrop for the whole area. Pride of Madeira grow thick and bright blue elongated flowers that bloom in April and May. They are quite spectacular when they are in bloom. Somewhere along the line, these invasive buggers have taken root in a various spots along the road and in between the agave attenuatas. I have now hacked down at least five such bushes that have gotten to about 5’ high. To do this I have used a combination of hand trimmers, branch trimmers and branch saws.

Among the garden tools that, I consider the hand trimmer to be vitally important to my gardening. I am forever using it to clip off seed stems and errant spring growth. This morning I took down an entire 5’x5’ Pride of Madeira, which I stuffed into a green garbage bin. To do that, all I needed was my trusty hand trimmer. I probably have four of them at this point, having lost several along the way, usually from falling out of my pocket. I have my favorites and then those that sit and wait for some emergency need. Just today, while I was at Harbor Freight, I took the opportunity to buy a new pair that I specifically want to keep in my truck (under the fold-up back seat) for the odd need when I drive in at the bottom of the front hill. All the other cutting and sawing tools are very useful at various times, but I consider them secondary to my daily use of my hand clippers.

The other item that occupies an inordinately important place in the tool hierarchy is the hose. I have six main hose bibs and therefore six main hoses that I use very frequently. There is so little one needs to do out here to make things grow, I think that watering takes on an even higher than normal degree of importance. I think it is fair to say that there are perhaps four types of hoses that I have tried and use for the various jobs around the property. I might add that Joventino has an additional four or five hose bibs that sit out among the gardens that he alone uses. He has some old hoses that have been with the place for a long time and I never use them and consider them his property.

The hoses that I use most often are the one for the Cecil Garden on the South side of the house and the one near the patio on the North side of the house. After trying several different kinds of hoses, I have settled on steel-clad hoses that I got from Hammacher Schlemmer. I like them because they do not kink and they feel substantial for hand watering purposes. That is one very important hose model I use. The next is the flattening/expanding hose that self-evacuates water when the spigot is turned off. This is not to be confused with the shrinking version of hose that does the same thing only more dramatically. I use the flattening type on the Southern back hillside and down by the front gate, where I use the hose particularly to water the ice plants across the road which have no irrigation. When I first discovered the shrinking hoses, I went a little crazy and bought them for all my spigots, only to find that they tend to get perforated very easily and thus, are simply not robust enough for regular use. The only place where I still use one is out on the deck where I have terracotta pot in which the shrinking hose sits and is only occasionally used since I purposefully do not keep any plants on the deck that need watering.

The remaining hose type is the one that is most recognizable to most homeowners. It is the large rubber hose that is made with some combination of rubber and cloth to create a flexible and rather heavy hose that is only so easy to use. Where metal, flat and shrinking hoses rarely kink, these heavy rubber garden hoses kink all the time. They are generally sold and stored in coiled fashion, which means that unless you uncoil it to specifically take the learned bend in it out, it will most certainly kink. Even if you take the trouble to unwind it carefully, just moving the hose around in the garden can make it kink up. And the problem with kinking is twofold. The restricted water flow is the first thing you will notice about a kink. The other thing that kinking does is weaken the hose structurally. I am thinking about hoses because a long two-section hose I use on the Northwest back hillside has been rendered useless because one of those kink spots weakened it so much that it ripped almost entirely in half. The need for a replacement got me thinking again about the array of hose options available. I went to Harbor Freight and bought a new 50 foot traditional rubber hose (not one of the lightweight ones nor the super heavy duty industrial one they offer). I bought the 50’ length because only one of the two sections was damaged. When I got it home and tried to remove the damaged one, I realized that the linkage between the two hoses had hardened to a point where a double wrench repeated grapple by me could not separate them. Rather than struggle further, I decided that I would sacrifice the other old hose and just buy another new one (a matching one if I can find it).

I catch a good ration of shit from Mike about the amount of water I use on my property. It is true that my water bill, while probably less than my propane bill, is far higher than my electric bill. I do monitor my Valley Center Municipal Water District bill quite closely (they have an interactive online app) and I do watch my irrigation water usage though my Hydrawise irrigation system app. What I can say unequivocally is that my spa and my irrigation system use up far more water than anything I use through my hoses. I’m not getting hosed by my hoses that way, but with half a dozen hoses in play on this property, I’m always aware that I am only one hose away from getting hosed.