Garden Hose

With simple care and easy repairs, your garden hose will last a long time. Here are some tips: --To keep your garden hose unsnarled and easy to transport, use a reel on wheels. Store it in the garage or shed. --Never hang a hose on a nail, which can crease it. Buy a wall rack or mount an old auto tire rim on the wall to serve as a rack. Straighten out kinks and creases as soon as you discover them. --Don't leave a hose lying on the ground between jobs.

After a hot morning of work, David Kahn and his farmhands sat down to lunch at a long wooden table on the porch. Today's feast featured a salad of juicy heirloom tomatoes picked from vines just a few feet away, pasta and pesto made with homegrown cilantro, and a crusty loaf of wheat bread baked the day before in an outdoor clay oven. If there are any doubts about the viability of Edendale Farm ? which Kahn built, improbably, on a sloping half acre smack in the middle of a swanky Silver Lake neighborhood ?

Mrs. G. W. Buck of Seal Beach would like to find some lightweight garden hose that collapses flat when the water is turned off; so far, her search has been one long dry spell, and she wonders whether the product is still being made. Can you get Buck turned on again, or should she give up the wait as long as her aspirations hold no water?

Most plungers are just plumb ugly, destined to be hidden in the closet or garage along with dustpans and toolboxes. Well, no more. "We didn't set out to reinvent the wheel, just to make it more fun," says Maria Barnes, right, co-founder of the Alice Supply Co. with Raili Clasen, left. The new Newport Beach-based design house has tried to transform some of the most unglamorous items in the house: a plunger ($18.50), toolbox ($46.50), garden hose ($38.50) and bucket ($36). To catch the eyes of modern guys, they added the manly Woodgrain Home Warrior set with a toolbox, dustpan and brush ($88.

A $3,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the prosecution of the garden-hose vandals who have been soaking businesses and government offices. The perpetrators have caused nearly $250,000 in damage at two law offices, city buildings, an insurance office and a state parks office. Between June 3 and 17, vandals went on a water spree.

"I grabbed my garden hose and climbed up on the roof. Pretty soon I was completely surrounded by fire. My T-shirt caught fire and I turned the hose on myself to put it out." These are the words of 60-year-old Gerry Hon, a retired truck driver describing his successful effort to save his house during the huge Santa Barbara fire last June. "I thought I could save it," he said, "they wanted me to leave but I refused to go because there is a lifetime of mementos in there. . . ." Hon was lucky.

The police were gone and there were no fire engines in sight. The homeowners fled. The only thing separating seven houses at the end of Mystic View and the immense fireball ravaging homes on the hills above was a garden hose and two men who didn't even live in the neighborhood.

Wash your car with 3-4 gallons of water, rather than the 15-18 gallons of water required by the recycling carwashes. Do it by using the common garden-variety "fogger" found at your neighborhood nursery. It works! Just attach it to the end of a garden hose. JOHN F. WEGNER Los Angeles

After a hot morning of work, David Kahn and his farmhands sat down to lunch at a long wooden table on the porch. Today's feast featured a salad of juicy heirloom tomatoes picked from vines just a few feet away, pasta and pesto made with homegrown cilantro, and a crusty loaf of wheat bread baked the day before in an outdoor clay oven. If there are any doubts about the viability of Edendale Farm ? which Kahn built, improbably, on a sloping half acre smack in the middle of a swanky Silver Lake neighborhood ?

With hot-weather months drawing near, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is scheduled to move ahead today with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's crackdown on excessive water use, boosting fines for those who violate city water laws and imposing new restrictions on anyone with a garden hose. The proposed "drought busters" law, which comes up for a vote by the five-member DWP commission, would double water-usage fines for residential customers and quadruple them for businesses and apartment building owners.

The professional firefighters didn't roll up to Corral Canyon in time Saturday. So Matt Haines finally had his chance to rev up and roll out the private firetruck he bought at a public surplus auction. Haines' 31-year-old pumper truck and his tanker truck of similar vintage -- purchased from the Merced County Fire Department -- helped a do-it-yourself fire brigade save a dozen homes when flames encircled their El Nido neighborhood.

Nothing good ever happened at 4 in the morning. Poems were never written. Songs were never sung. Church bells were never rung. Four in the morning is best left to cat burglars or priests muttering last rites. Even an earthquake will usually wait till at least 5. "Psst," I hear from the living room. "Psst, come here. Quick-quick-quick." I stir from a raging sleep. Most sleep is angry these days. Demanding bosses. Declining benefits. Presidential candidates who don't have a clue.

A fast-moving brush fire, apparently deliberately set, gutted homes in two condominium complexes Wednesday and threatened several other homes in a bluff-top neighborhood overlooking the San Clemente pier. The blaze began at the bottom of Trafalgar Canyon about 3:20 p.m. and raced a quarter-mile up the steep slope, fueled by ocean breezes and heavy vegetation.

A Swedish beekeeper has taken his neighbor to court for killing his swarm of bees, demanding $933 in compensation, a news agency said. The bees left their hive in the rural village of Vittaryd in southern Sweden and flew into the neighbor's garden. The neighbor doused them with a garden hose, and the shock of the cold water killed them, the TT news agency said.

A $3,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the prosecution of the garden-hose vandals who have been soaking businesses and government offices. The perpetrators have caused nearly $250,000 in damage at two law offices, city buildings, an insurance office and a state parks office. Between June 3 and 17, vandals went on a water spree.

A Swedish beekeeper has taken his neighbor to court for killing his swarm of bees, demanding $933 in compensation, a news agency said. The bees left their hive in the rural village of Vittaryd in southern Sweden and flew into the neighbor's garden. The neighbor doused them with a garden hose, and the shock of the cold water killed them, the TT news agency said.

Watching the famous eruption of a volcano on Heimaey, Iceland, which was broadcast live by any number of TV teams, I saw an elderly man in braces showered by sulphur and brimstone, ignoring the storm, the heat, the video cables, the ash and the spectators (including myself, crouching on my carpet in front of the livid screen), who held a garden hose, slender but clearly visible, aimed at the roaring lava, until neighbors joined him, soldiers, children, firemen, pointing more and more hoses at

It's an unspoken law of yardwork that a garden hose always stops just short of where you need it. But tugging on the hose to gain the last bit of ground only shortens its life. Eventually, a spray of water at one of the couplings tells you it's time to fix the hose or pitch it. You can stop the leaks with replacement couplings, of which there are several styles. Quick-disconnect fittings are great, but they're not cheap.