Old Faithful (Hori Hori R.I.P. #3)

Honestly, I'm surprised I lasted this long. I've heard it happens to all gardeners eventually, you just never expect it when it's your turn. How appropriate, though, that it happened on my first day with my brand new replacement Hori Hori Knife. For those readers not following along, I "lost" my trusty Hori Hori a couple months ago and have been eulogizing its loss by enumerating its many fun uses. Today I discovered a fun new use: Geyser-Creating-Device!
The story pretty much writes itself, but is best imagined in jerky, black and white silent-movie slapstickery. Two gardeners idly chatting, enjoying a leisurely Monday of planting seasonal beds for autumn. One gardener pulls out a Hori Hori knife to plant some bulbs (a la R.I.P #2). His face gradually shows signs of frustration, as the ground seems to be much harder and rockier than he would like. Bulb by bulb, he begins jabbing the ground harder and harder. Boy, this must be some soil! He wipes sweat off his face and laughs; fortunately there are only a few more bulbs left to plant. Ha ha! Jab jab jab and then the screen erupts in white! Oh goodness, he's hit a PVC irrigation pipe and stabbed right through it with that fool knife of his! A 12 foot geyser is shooting out of the ground and he's flat on his ass with a priceless look on his dripping wet face; the other gardener is running around clearly yelling and (if you can read lips) clearing swearing up a storm!

The rest of the afternoon is not nearly so well-scripted and tends to drag on into increasingly muddy and shameful trips to the local hardware store as successive attempts to repair the problem before the clients get home are met with more catastrophic damage of the irrigation system, more livid cursing than ever, and more pitying looks from the hardware store employees.
So dear diary today I learned that a Hori Hori knife piloted by impatience and frustration can become a terrible force of nature, spawning elemental water spouts from seemingly dry ground; I also learned how not to repair broken PVC pipe (turns out there's more than one way!) and, just in the nick of time before the end of the day, how to correctly repair broken PVC pipe. And now, for the rest of the season, every bulb I plant will be just a little bit too shallow because frankly I'm terrified to dig anymore.