hose affairs

I've never gotten along with hoses very well. They make me profane. They make me mad. They occasionally make me tumble to the ground and hurt a lot. It's that "hose" time of the year again, and I'm back to wondering what kind of fiendish designer comes up with all the little extra features that can irritate the hell out of hose owners. I think hoses have a poor work ethic. They'll do anything to get out of doing their job.

Just the other day I was trying to water my north garden. I came up with this plan that if I left several sections of hose permanently resting along the north side of the barnyard, all I'd have to do is hook up a short segment each day, do my watering, unhook and move on to the next spot.

Seemed like a good idea until I was two thirds of the way toward the far end of the garden when the hose got caught on something around the corner from that ugly mulch pile we inherited and haven't quite figured out how to rid ourselves of without burning down Stan Meserve's pretty spruce trees. It's got a lot of sod, grass, egg shells, kitty litter and such. It's held together by metal posts and snow fence, and it's the north yard blight, for sure. In addition, it provides great potential for hoses wishing to stir up trouble.

Usually, hoses wait to pull such stunts only after you've already walked twenty miles around the place from faucet to faucet getting them set up for the watering session. By that time, you don't want to walk another foot to take care of the hose hang-up. So, you stand steady and proceed to pull and pull and pull and pull. Suddenly, splat!

Your old body is lying flat out on the ground, your hip feels like it just hit a brick wall. But, you don't have time to think about the pain. There's also the embarrassment because there's always the possibility of a car rolling by and the curious driver pulling to a stop to ask you why you're lying out there in your yard straddled between the garden dirt and the grass.

So, to avoid having to explain, you get that aching body off the ground as quickly as possible. All those steps saved in tugging the unwilling piece of rubber are lost anyway, plus a few more as you go retrieve the end of the hose, which is, by this time, is several feet back from where you managed to coerce it before it jerked backward and sent your body to the ground. That's one of two scenarios.

In other cases, one section of hose gives in and disconnects itself from the other five segments that you have so carefully hooked together. You know you have to hurry to find the break because all that high-priced, metered Oden water is running loose back there behind the barnyard fence, wetting down Stan Meserve's pasture. He's a nice neighbor, but you still prefer to pay for just your own water. So, ya gotta hurry through the jungle of prickly spruce limbs, find the disconnect, and hook it back up.

Either of those scenarios is enough to turn you into a cursing mad woman, but they're nothing compared to the reactions to these newer kinkier-than-ever hoses. What's the deal anyway? Again, who are these hose engineers. Can't they build a better hose, or are they representing the same manufacturers who've cursed the world with all those faulty hearing aides and throw-away weed eaters?

I swear. And, I swear a lot every morning when the hose is, for once, not pulling those "hang-up-on-anything-you-can-find-to not do your work" antics. Even when it does follow along obediently, these new models choke up with every breath. The kinks are limited to no particular piece of the hose either, so you can't devise any effective strategy to avoid an empty spout when you least suspect it. You just have to expect it and to know that kinks don't unkink that easily.

A general kink requires at least twenty more steps, either to pull the hose halfway across the lawn to straighten out the kink only to have a new kink spring up on your trip back to where you were watering. Or, you can waste time by walking directly to the area of impaction for hands-on correction of infraction.

I've also tried the old trick of standing in my tracks and turning the hose over and over and over to remove the kink, but even that gets annoying when the 30th revolution still has no impact on the impacted hose.

If this wasn't enough, I must add a black-and-white Border Collie to the morning watering mix. Border Collies take hoses and watering very seriously. They hover near the spout, hoping for every opportunity to herd that spraying water or nip the end of the hose should it wander from its designated destination. Hoses do wander a lot, as already stated, so Border Collies keep very busy. Often they're so intent on their work and move so fast chasing that hose and its water that they may inadvertently put the hose operator on the ground for another painful body slam.

I haven't found any easy answers to any of these dilemmas, just as I've found no duck tape capable of shutting down a leak three feet from the end of the hose where I'm trying to spray the garden, only to have the leak spraying me.

It's a tough life during hot summer days, keeping things watered with these unruly pieces of rubber, but I guess without conflict, life would be pretty dull. And, if I'm ever needing a conflict fix, all I need to do is grab a hose, and I know my masochistic needs will be satisfied.