When rain won't come

It has been about 2 weeks since my last update here, and during that amount of time it has been very arid. In the Midwest United States, it seems as though we either get bombarded by storm after storm or we get long stretches of time where there is virtually no precipitation.

We all know that plants need water to survive, so when the rains don't provide for our gardens, we have to improvise. Normally, this would involve getting out the watering can and hitting each of our plants with enough water to keep them not only alive, but thriving. We do this with our handy-dandy water hose with a spraying nozzle attachment. It's a 50 foot hose. It gets the job done, but is kind of time consuming to get the proper amount of water to each plant. Plus, I don't like to get leaves wet when there is so much sunlight and heat. So I improvised.
There is a LOT of gravel in my garden, so I decided to put it to use. I dug a nice little hole and made a bit of a reservoir by packing some of the larger pieces of gravel tightly. The idea was to have a nice place for the running water to freely pour in without eroding the soil, thus preventing a nice big muddy mess. Improvise.

I decided to take the path of the ancients and use very simple tools to dig a lengthy and convoluted irrigation ditch through my garden. I am not sure what inspired me to make an attempt at this. Maybe I did it just to see if i could. Pictured here; Stick, rock, dirt. Not pictured, hoe, shovel, blistered hand.

The hardest part was not only getting the path of the ditch close enough to the plants so that they could absorb the water, but providing just enough of a slope so that the water didn't pool. Trial and error. Improvise. After it was all (mostly) done, I turned on the water to see if it would follow the path. Much to my pride, my work was not wasted. The water travelled in the channels exactly as I had hoped. And, here is the best part. I could shove a stone or block in certain parts of the path to focus water in areas that needed more moisture. You can see that there are some plants on the upper left of the picture that have no irrigation running to them. That is a job for tomorrow. I want to make sure the system works, and it has only been a day. So far, so good. I can't wait to see the results. Will update!