The Case of the Kinky Hose

One of my pot plants has died. I should specify for any Americans mistakenly wandering through my blog that in the UK and Australia a pot plant is a plant grown in a pot. Not a type of plant that is likely to excite the attention of the local law enforcement agencies.

The problem is watering plants is sometimes just too hard. And then they die.

I tell myself off about this from time to time - how hard can it be to apply H2O to an atmospheric-carbon-reducing lifeform? I am just lazy.

In my defense I'd like to tell you about my morning.

It was a day for a few loads of washing. On these days I like to get started early and wear a sleeveless top because that gets me a couple of doses of 10 minutes of Vitamin D fresh from the sun, before it turns into the scorching Queensland inferno at about 9am. It's particularly important this week, because I'm wearing a sleeveless dress to a wedding this weekend and I'd like to get rid of my winter wonderland shoulders. Just a touch of not-quite-reflective will do.

Having hung out the first load and waiting on the second I decided to water my plants - so this is how it went:

1. Find brand new garden hose we bought a week ago because the old hose is broken and split and can't reach from the tank pump to any of the vegetation that we water. I was sick of lugging various receptacles multiple times between the nearest tap and the plants.
2. Dig through the garage to find some sharp implement that can cut the plastic tape packaging the brand new hose. There could be a whole other post on finding things in the garage belonging to my Beloved. Let's just say that the rusty old secateurs which were the only thing I have previously found have moved since last time I needed a sharp cutting implement of any description. I ended up hacking away at the plastic tape with an old kitchen knife I came across. Yes, it took time but there was no saying that the additional garage search time would have yielded anything else that was capable of cutting.
3. Attach hose to the tank tap.
4. Try to unravel 30 metres of garden hose from the factory machinery tightly wound roll.
5. Get all 30 metres somehow criss-crossing and re-crossing all through itself in a way that defies logic, given that there are only two ends (I checked this fact once I finally had the hose in an operational state) one of which is attached to a fixed point. How?
6. Try to unwind the kinks out of it. I should mention that I wanted a flexible hose. Stiff ones break when they get frosted and are impossible to store because they want to lie in a 30 metre straight line. Unfortunately the tight winding and the flexibility of the wretched thing lead to it kinking approximately every 30-45 centimetres. Do you know how many kinks that makes in a 30 metre hose? About 350,000. Before you chide me on my mental arithmetic, I hope you accounted for the fact that simply moving the hose makes the kinks come back in the same place again.
7. In my unwinding for de-kinking purposes I ended up with superkinks backwards and forwards and wound around each other at the loose end, which weren't easy to get undone.
8. Dump end of hose over fence. Because we have about a bazillion unfinished house and garden projects there is no gate between the backyard and the front yard. We have to go through the garage. So turn on tap (near the tank in the back yard) and run through the garage, under the house shortcut and rescue snaking nozzle from sending water through the neighbours' window.
9. Water potted plants. Three (plus one dead one - you never know, it might get resurrected). Took approximately 3 minutes.
10. Run back through garage and turn off tap.
11. Pull 30 metres of hose back over the fence and carry it around the other side of the house and put it over the other fence.
12. Go back through the garage.
13. Open gate. Yes, we have one gate. It's a half-finished project and is only connected to half a fence, so there's another fence just inside it that doesn't have a gate.
14. Reach through this fence to the tap and turn it on.
15. Stretch the hose out to reach our one and only garden bed.
16. Go back and undo some new kinks while the garden hose entertains the dog by flicking water back and forth.
17. Water the plants. Approximately 4-5 minutes.
18. Realise that the decomposed granite that my Beloved put down beside the driveway could do with some water to compact it.
19. Hear the washing machine finish the load of washing.
20. Water the deco.
21. Dog runs through the wet deco and spreads it over the concrete driveway.
22. Hose down concrete driveway - feeling the need to justify my poor water saving practices by announcing to the world at large that I'm using tank water.
23. Reach through fence to turn off tap.
24. Pull 30 metres of hose off the driveway.
25. Run upstairs to get another load of washing.
26. Yell at wet, muddy dog who thought that following me up the stairs would be a good option.
27. Hang out load of washing.
28. Apply after sun gel to my shoulders because the 10 minute job took too long and it's now after 9am and the scorching Queensland inferno has commenced.

How much am I motivated to water my plants?

...Approximately None

(But justified that it's not just laziness on my part)