If you are a gardener, or contemplating becoming one, you should be forewarned about one of the most dangerous hazards that awaits you the moment you dare set foot in your little garden plot. This predator lies coiled and camouflaged in the foliage and is ready to spring out and strike when you least expect it.

You might guess incorrectly by assuming this threat is a poisonous snake such as a cobra or a rattler whose deadly venom would put you in the throes of agony before your lifeless body converted to a heap of compost and mulch. Then again, perhaps you may mistake this creature for a bone crunching python or boa constrictor lurking in the vegetation and ready to coil itself around your unsuspecting torso before squeezing you into a manageable nice light snack.

Your guess at the species of predator that is stalking you is actually not that far off. It may not be a cold-blooded soulless reptile but could easily appear as one in your overly fertile imagination. What you had projected as a murderous serpent is none other than the common garden hose.

Okay. Perhaps a little exaggeration is at play here. Everybody knows that garden hoses are inanimate tools invented by humankind to transport water from one place to another. If you believe that, you are dead wrong. In reality, they have minds of their own and their sole purpose on this earth is to frustrate the hell out of gardeners.

When you bring a new hose home from the hardware store, it is usually attractively packaged and held together in tight coils by plastic zip ties which can be easily snipped without much shedding of your blood. 

When you unwrap the packaging, you realize that the coils present a problem because you want a long flat line that maximizes the full length of the hose. The accepted method to get rid of the circular coils is to allow the hot sun to get at the hose and gradually force it to let go of its spiral shape and lie flat along the ground. Unfortunately, this will never happen because as soon as you expose the hose to the hot sun, the sun will mysteriously disappear for six weeks and be replaced by incessant rain (which will negate the reason you bought the hose in the first place).

Even if the sun does shine, most gardeners are too impatient to allow their hoses to flatten properly. There’s good reason why gardeners are referred to as “hosers.” It’s only a matter of time before the nefarious hose, bent on evil intent, transforms itself into a rubber leg-hold trap which catches the gardener in its clutches and brings him down. The more the gardener struggles, the more wrapped up and tangled he gets. This usually occurs when said gardener is in the process of pushing a wheelbarrow overloaded with a giant heap of manure and compost. Inevitably, the gardener will land at the very bottom while the wheelbarrow’s steaming load will act as a proper topping.

Moving hoses from one area of the garden to another can often make for a dangerous and complex manoeuvre. While you are dragging one end of the hose over to the tomato plant bed, you may not realize that most of the other end of the hose has decided to take a short cut through your bean patch, thusly wiping out weeks of dedicated care and labour. As a result, you may find that the water sprinkling down on each tomato seedling has a definite salty taste because it has fallen directly as tears from your eyes.

Then there’s the matter of connecting hoses together or pulling them apart. The slow, old-fashioned method involves screwing the male end of one hose into the female end of another. If you don’t know which is which, nobody has to know, but make sure you don’t cross-thread the ends while trying to screw them together. You will wind up stripping the thread so that the two ends will never be able to couple properly. Not only will you get soaked by the resulting spray, but you will probably ruin both hoses.

Another important detail when connecting hoses to just about anything is making sure you place a rubber washer between the hose and whatever other device you are attaching to it. 

It doesn’t matter whether it’s another hose, a water faucet, a timer, a sprinkler, a drip hose, a water valve, a wand, or an entire irrigation system, the result of not using this ridiculously cheap but absolutely essential gizmo will result in you getting more soaked than any part of your garden.

Hoses have this bad habit of getting tangled up with each other. The cheaper ones tend to kink and bend over one another. The kink eventually causes a split in the hose which causes a hundred foot geyser, like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, to shoot up into the air. It will be only a matter of minutes before your well or water reservoir will have run dry.

Instead of screwing together the ends of hoses and other watering devices, another way to go is by using quick-click and release connectors such as the ones marketed by Gardena and Temu. The beauty of these connectors is that it makes changing from one watering tool to another just a simple click away. What could be better?

Well, what could be better is if these devices didn’t cost an arm and a leg for each connector (and you will probably need a couple of handfuls to attach to all your watering thingamabobs), or if they didn’t crack or break as readily, or if they didn’t leak as easily even if you remembered to use rubber washers.

Nobody asked me, but if you go down to the woods today you’re in for a big surprise. 

If, however, you amble down to your garden at any time, don’t be shocked if you find a predatory green garden hose lurking in the shrubbery. The hose is the hunter and you are the prey. If you are not exceedingly careful, it might be a case of the hoser getting hosed. Remember, I never promised you a hose garden.

Salt Spring Islanders have a storied tradition of rolling up our collective sleeves to tackle problems left too long unsolved. 

Increasingly, as we’ve seen with the proliferation of employer-operated housing, those ad hoc solutions are created now by businesses. To solve parking scarcity during the high demand Saturday Market period, a new lot on Ganges Hill has been launched with a novel approach: framing a partnership between island businesses and local nonprofits, with support from the Chamber of Commerce. And always eager for fundraising opportunities, we have little doubt the response to a call for groups willing to staff the lot in exchange for half the $10-per-car fee was robust. Back-of-the-napkin math would easily put the take in the high hundreds, which is not bad for a day’s volunteering.

At the May 16 Saturday Market, early reviews were good. Holding some cars up the hill thinned out Ganges traffic noticeably, if not transformatively.

That the new lot on Fulford-Ganges Road might also relieve parking pressure at Country Grocer/Ganges Village Marketplace was not lost upon islanders, who tend to hold forth on summer traffic at both places with a Yogi Berra level of zen: “no one shops on weekends, it’s too crowded.” The beauty of the “market parking” sign was that it could be read to cover either, and property owner Leigh Large himself was spotted driving at least the inaugural shuttle run down the hill in the placarded six-seater golf cart. 

The abrupt long-weekend launch of the lot left no time to investigate, but while it seems unlikely the property is zoned to permit off-site parking, it seems even less likely our Local Trust Committee — at least those members who still show up to the meetings — would enforce against a collaboration featuring struggling charities and Salt Spring’s largest private employer. 

Our trustees have spoken as a single voice — lately, almost literally — in refusing to let perfect be the enemy of good. And we’ve certainly chided them before for selectively enforcing their own bylaws, rather than tackling the substantive work addressing the land use authority’s role in whatever problem needs fixing.

But however one feels about shortcuts, by definition they get somewhere faster. We hope both our vendors and island nonprofits absolutely rake in the cash this summer.

The following is written by a Salt Spring Islander in response to news reports of the currently shut Crofton pulp mill having interested buyers.

By PETER HAASE

Forests become sawn lumber and the scraps usually processed into pulp and paper. If only!

The waste and environmental destruction in B.C. has been immeasurable from day one. The greedy lumber barons still rule.

The Crofton mill and adjacent log export facility are just two of many lumber-related industries in our province, and have existed just across the narrow waters between Salt Spring Island and Vancouver Island. The centuries-old forestry industry in our province is so enormous it boggles the mind. 

There are many pulp and paper mills and massive sawmills, scattered around our magnificent, lush province. The export of raw logs is a stupidly unbalanced policy, sending material that could be used in secondary wood industries like Sweden has done.

Flying for hours over B.C. presents an endless green carpet of forest, still mismanaged by our day-dreaming governments, federally and provincially. Ironically, we harvest all this lumber, sell it for pennies to China and the United States, while shutting things down here because the profit margin does not suit the wealthy owners? Both limiting exports and increased home manufacturing could work in concert, but that would take brains and imagination. Sorry, but greed and unemployment seem to be today’s agenda. 

I’ve worked in construction on a few mills, and know how quickly a shutdown can turn a thriving mill town into a ghost town. It’s all avoidable pain and loss, but China and the U.S. continue to gain as we lose. Maybe Canada should be more protectionist like other countries. Is it short sighted to suggest, charity begins at home?  Any thoughts?

British Columbia exports millions of cubic meters of raw logs annually, with figures varying based on market demand and coastal harvest rates. Recent reports indicate that raw log exports reached approximately 2.75 million cubic feet in 2024 to Asia and the U.S., while some estimates suggest higher, long-term averages or peak years exceeding 6 million cubic metres.

In Sweden, IKEA’s global success stems from its “democratic design” approach, offering stylish, functional home furnishings at remarkably low prices through a unique flat-pack, self-assembly model. By focusing on cost-control, massive economies of scale and immersive, experience-driven, maze-like retail stores, IKEA became the world’s largest furniture retailer, operating over 500 stores globally and generating over $45 billion in annual sales in fiscal year 2024.