It’s time for gardens, both vegetable and flower. Here, in our new Pines, we are still learning the lay of the land and what to grow and where. We both have new spaces to garden. Even though we are less than two miles from our old gardens, the ground is very different. We’re learning what does best where, as we go. One thing that does not change from the old Pines to the new is the need to get water to said gardens. And there lies the rub. When it comes to the hose use issue, I’m in a mixed marriage.
The Gardner, like many men, believes that if you use the hose you should put it back in a neat coil on the hose hanger when done. No exceptions. I, on the other hand, believe that the hose should be where and when it’s needed, and that is not on the hose hanger, but with the flowerbeds. The neat and tidy hose folks simply do not understand the complexities of flowerbed watering or the inconvenience of dragging hoses about when needed. We have very civilly discussed this issue each year for more years than I care to say.
I always keep my hoses out of the mower’s way. I run them on the edge of the garden path and now along the deck. This allows me to water everywhere without dragging a hose very far. There is always one where I need it. Perfect. The Gardner coils them up when I’m not looking, neatness driven. The only place his hose is allowed to lay between uses is within his vegetable garden…and all the way across the yard to that point.
My mother’s brother Bill was an exception to the man-hose rule. He constructed elaborate switching systems and had pipe coming from the ground with so many different faucets on it that it looked like a brass and copper tree. Bill took good care of his hoses, being too frugal to replace them due to misuse. He made sure that there was no pressure left on them in the hot sun and each was thoroughly drained before he put them away in neat coils tied with binder twine, for the winter. Bill valued a good hose and lamented the bygone days of real rubber hoses to anyone who would listen. He had a piece of faded green to gray hose that had served Grandpa’s gardens. He liked to talk about the long life of that hose and its whole history, again to anyone who would listen. Now that was a hose.
The Farm didn’t have electricity until 1936. My farming family relied on the windmill for water supply power until the lights went on, and probably many times thereafter. Water went to the house, of course, and was piped to the barns for the milk cows. Garden water, via rubber hose, ran up the back drive toward the orchard where the large garden spot was. It was a long push for the system, but far better than the earliest days when water was brought to the garden via a large barrel on a wagon.
Years ago, when Bill gave up the livestock part of farming, he moved his gardens closer to the water source, and placed them in the old barnyard. The increased availability of water and the abundance of a well composted spot allowed Bill to grow amazing things. His parsnips and carrots were legendary in size and taste. He grew elephant garlic that was the envy of many a gardener. His sweet corn grew to ten feet and his heirloom tomatoes were all the size of large grapefruit. Even 20 years after the last animals had left the farm their leavings continued to enrich the soil.
As old age and illness forced Bill to give up gardening, he gave away his gardening equipment. He gave us, among other seeds and starts, his precious parsnip seeds and garlic sets. Sadly, parsnips did not do well in our sandy soil and the garlic was a shadow of its former self, eventually passing on. Grandpa’s hose and the others had a good run. Bill’s faucet tree grew from our garden pump, sprouting the Gardner’s hoses until the well gave out. Then it became garden art for me. I still have it. It’s a prize of sorts, from the hose wars days.
Our new Pines has, purely because of the layout, put a truce to our hose wars. After all these years we are still deadlocked, coiled hose or handy hose, but their positions don’t matter as they once did. I could go on, but I won’t. We each appreciate the gardening efforts of the other. Besides, the faucet tree trophy resides in my garden.