Ode to the Garden Hoses

In the words of Kermit the Frog…”it ain’t easy being green”. This is true for puppet frogs and garden hoses alike. My garden hose gets a workout this time of year, stretched pulled and yanked. All winter it sits idle, empty, and cold. Is there any more useful summer tool than the humble garden hose? Or any more fun? Drinking from garden hoses is a favorite summertime activity of mine. Of course, you are not suppose drink from garden hoses. But I do anyway. I overeat at Thanksgiving too. Garden hoses are rumored to carry toxins, lead and bacteria that can leech into the water yet I can seldom resist running the torrent from hot to cold through twisted feet of coil and getting my mouth and face blasted. This typically leads to water drooling down my neck, splattering on my flip-flopped feet, drenching my shirt. I have a bar of soap sitting near my hose for full-on showers on the really hot days or when it is too hot to sleep a quick in-the-buff cool down. If I had a river or a lake nearby I use those. But all I’ve got is a garden hose; the brass mouthed open fountain of summer.

Mine hose is a classic. A green a 25 foot, 5/8 interior diameter, ¾ inch thread coupling, brass fitted, US standard rubber garden hose. Garden hoses are made from a variety of materials of which of rubber hoses are the heaviest. I drag my hose. I muscle my hose. I tug at it and pull. Heavy rubber hose are not easy to handle. Rubber hoses are often made with tire cord fiber but they can also be made of vinyl, or a hybrid of the two. My hose is a thick ply of rubber and layers of vinyl or nylon reinforced vinyl. It resists weathering, kinks and cracks. It is heavy, unwieldy, durable and green.

I loosely wind and my garden hose after each use de-flaking it to hang on a hose saddle rack. At the spigot my hose mates to multiple die-cast manifold system allowing me to turn my one outdoor faucet into two. I can use both a once or just one at a time. All my heaving and tugging has pushed loose a washer and I’ve recently sprung a high pressure leak. Whenever I turn on the water a hissing spray jets wets my arm and wrist and forearm. I attached a hose bib when I bought the hose three years ago in anticipation of this but the water has burst through regardless.

There are a many interesting and useful couplings out there for the working-end of hose. There are pistol-grip nozzles that dispense water when the handle is pressed. They have a number of adjustable spray patterns and settings; jet, soak, shower, mist…and so on. There are long-handled wands for reaching hanging plants and other out of the way places. There are sprinklers, all sort of sprinklers - oscillating, rain bird, timed and adjustable. There are other types of hoses too. Coiled hoses are made from polyurethane and stretch when pulled and then snap back into a tight slinky-like shape when not in use. They come in different colors like, red, pink, purple, and blue. There are flat hoses, I call them firefighter hoses, made of nylon that reel-in for easy rewinding and storage. They are neat and tidy and I hear they are safe to drink from. Hoses come in many shapes and sizes with advertising like “swan soft”, “supple soaker” and ‘kink free. Martha Stewart has special double-reinforced vinyl “flexagon” that promises all of the above.

All these accessories and hoses allow you to easily control and manipulate the water in a variety of ways. I don’t own a single one. Instead I prefer to control the stop and start vinyasa of water by strangling the neck of my hose in the grip of my hand and with a steady thumb orchestrate jet, soak, shower or mist…as needed. For hard to reach places I slop and splash and improvise. I like my hose nearly untamable so I can whip-em, heave-em and tug-em.

I do have a second hose. It is a soaker hose. It isn’t anything like my garden hose, none of the flash or fun. But I’ve grown to adore is my soaker hose too. A dry soaker hose is grayish black, coarsely textured, oddly carinated beast. Thankfully I only have to handle it once or twice a year. The soaker twists and turns along the floor of my three small flower and vegetable beds. Two or three times a week at this time of year I twist the spigot to full blast and listen as water surges and swells the length of hose rushing the 50 feet past my marigolds, opal and lemon basil, rosemary, lavender, thyme, daffodils, cilantro, ground covering, and up to the stand of six tomato plants overtaking the sunniest area along the fence. Finding the far end capped and plugged the water pushes outward as the soaker grows an inky black and begins to weep and seep through tiny pores like a river over run its banks. The working-end of a soaker hose isn’t the brash fitted mouth but its entire length.

Soakers don’t have the flash of a sprinkler system or a summer rain shower but for getting a watering job done nothing is more efficient and easy. Because they apply water directly to the soil they don’t lose water to evaporation. A soaker hose can use up to 70 percent less water than a standard garden hose sprinkler delivery system. Soakers can be buried or covered with mulch so the black hose can be camouflaged too. My soaker is on its third season. During the winter I store it behind the shed but in the early spring I pull it out and after cleaning my beds, lay it down against the bare soil. Then I plant around it like a farmer on the alluvial banks of the Jordan River or Nile River Valley. As the season passes, herbs, flowers and vegetable burst from the banks of the soaker river and overwhelm my beds.

I haven’t been part of a good water fight in a couple of years but I still find great joy in a green garden hose. These typically started small, with squirt guns or a flick from someone’s fingertips and then escalated to water balloons, cups, and buckets. They always ended with someone planting by a spigot armed with the garden hose. And then chasing all comers as fast as they could, uncoiling green chain behind them like a guard dog, water spitting as far as thumb allowed.

All good things,
Wig