Rain barrels are fashionable these days. If you want credibility as an environmentally responsible gardener, you install a rain barrel or two. For about $100 you can get a purpose-made model (plastic, of course) with various nifty features. Or you can make your own.  I have three home-made barrels — two used to be plastic garbage containers and the third is actually a genuine wooden barrel — very picturesque.

Funky Wooden Barrel

Former Garbage Can

There’s only one problem — it doesn’t rain here in the summer. In April and May my barrels actually fill up with rainwater, and I use it for the small amount of watering I do at the time — newly planted things or pots.

In June, rain becomes scarce and by July nonexistent. My rain barrels would be empty until late August or September if I didn’t fill them with the hose. How ironic is that?

Filling up with the hose does make sense. I do that only to the two plastic former garbage cans, which are open at the top. The funky wooden barrel stays mostly full of rainwater, because I draw from it very sparingly. Empty, it would dry out and crack. But the two plastic barrels are handy water reservoirs for filling my watering can, which gets daily use through the summer. It’s much faster to fill by dipping into the barrel than starting up the hose every time. I get through an entire hand-watering session (a zillion pots plus half a dozen especially water-needy plants in the ground) on one barrel fill-up.

In summer I think I should have been born under the sign of Aquarius.