The heat is on. It was up to 85 degrees today with humidity to spare. You know, the kind that makes the hair on your neck perpetually wet and sticky and that makes you worry all day that you might smell.

I forgot to remember: my joints ache in the humidity.

Just because it isn't raining doesn't mean the humidity isn't high or that I won't ache. So today, I ache. All day.

I deliberated on the virtues of watering my garden, my fledgling seedlings versus the coming water shortage. Every summer in Northern Virginia ends with a drought, and with good reason. When temperatures start in April to climb in to the 80s, the summer can only end with temps well above 100 degrees, like last summer. This does not incline the weather to produce copius amounts of rain. Heat and humidity does throw a few thunderstorms this way and that, but usually they are of the short and heavy kind, like a George Costanza storm. It blows in fast and furious, makes a lot of fuss but in the end does no good whatsoever - to boost the water table.

Part of my watering deliberation involved the effort it takes to pull out the hose. That's a great attitude for a tiny farmer.

I read an article in Organic Gardening Magazine about making little irrigation drippers out of inverted juice cartons.

http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-26-27-1664,00.html

This sounds like a great idea because I certainly don't have the money to irrigate my entire property. I'm just feeling a little fussy about having ugly juice cartons all around the garden. However, having already pointed out the mess in my garden, I guess I should relent.
I can't help but want to buy a rain barrel, however my husband is not fully on board with spending over $100 for a giant barrel and then sawing off the bottom portion of one of our rain spouts. This won't do anything to solve my issues about dragging the hose around, since the hose connects to the bottom of the rain barrel, but it does put concerns about drought into perspective and certainly provides a use for rainwater runoff.