You Were The One Watering It.
We planted our little Christmas tree just as soon as Christmas ended. My job was to water the tree.
With the hose set directly under the tree, I was to run water daily at a slow trickle. This gives the tree deep, strong roots.
The hose, unfortunately, was six feet too short to reach the tree.
I whined to Bill: “The hose won’t reach! The tree will die!”
So Bill went outside and made a contraption – two long hoses together and some kind of new-fangled spout thing on the end.
“Now it will reach,” he said.
I ran the contraption through the garage to the tree. I watered the tree, then closed the garage doors and went inside.
Bill came home from work. “Why did you take the hose through the garage?” he asked.
“It wasn’t as muddy,” I said. “And I left the doors open while the water was running. You said I could drive over the hose with a car as long as the water wasn’t running.”
“That’s not the same,” he said. “You can’t leave it pinched under a heavy garage door.” Bill pulled the contraption out of the garage and wound it around the house to the tree.
For days, I watered that tree: turned on the spigot, set the timer, turned off the spigot two hours later. Then one day, I walked out to the tree to see how the new-fangled spout thing worked.
The hose was under the tree, but no water was coming out of the new-fangled spout thing. For days, I’d “watered” nothing.
This was Bill’s fault. “Why would you set up this whole contraption and not turn it ON?”
“Why would I turn it on?” he asked. “You were the one watering it.”
He had a point, but I didn’t admit this.
The next day, water was trickling down our driveway when I watered the tree. I whined to Bill: “Why is there a puddle on the driveway?”
“Because you put the garage door down on the hose,” he said. As Bill had predicted, I’d ruined one of the two hoses. At my request, he taped it – but duct tape doesn’t work on everything.
About that time, snow hit. The ground was too frozen for watering. At some point during the freeze, the leaky hose disappeared.
When the weather warmed, I looked at the tree. The hose was still underneath, waiting to provide those strong roots.
So I went out to the spigot, turned the water on trickle – and I remembered, for the first time, to check the new-fangled spout thing. I walked out to the tree.
The new-fangled spout thing was turned on, but no water was trickling. I turned it off, then on again. (It works for my computer.) But no water came out. Frustrated, I removed the spout thing – still no water.
Then I saw a kink in the hose – a big kink. I walked over, bent down, and untwisted the hose, sure that the tree would be blasted with water. But not a single drop emerged.
I threw down the spout thing, frustrated, and examined the hose. I looked for more kinks, untwisting even the smallest ones. Still no water! Finally I gave up.
I walked back to the spigot to turn the water off. That’s when I noticed: the hose was no longer attached to the spigot. The water was pouring straight onto the ground, making a puddle in the bushes.
To be fair, those bushes blocked my view.
I turned off the water. I reconnected the hose to the spigot. Then I turned the water on – again – and went to make sure the water was finally coming out of the end of the hose.
It was!
Unfortunately the hose is six feet too short to reach the tree.