It has been a very dry spring so far. It hasn’t rained substantially in weeks. Fortunately, I have a small backhoe and like digging small ponds. I do this in areas where the water naturally accumulates, so that we have some for the dry spells.

However at the new house, we didn’t have any ponds and now we have garden beds. My first little ponds was a big success, even getting a frog to move in after a day. Yet it isn’t close to the current beds I’m building where my peas are already. It isn’t efficient to be carrying watering cans back and forth over 35 yards several times to water.

Ideally, I’d have water above the garden and get some drip irrigation like I saw at a workshop put on by the Grafton Nature museum a couple of weeks back. So this evening I went looking for a good spot up the hill a bit. With it being so dry, it was hard to find anywhere that looked any better than anywhere else, but there was one area where I knew water should be.

Currently dry creek, but obviously where water comes down the hill.

There is a creek bed where water is often coming down the hill. It’s a bit far from the garden beds, but definitely above them. I decided to try digging there to see how it would go and what I might encounter.

New pond to capture the water when it comes.

I was really surprised how dry the ground was up here. I still have very wet areas in the yard down below, but this hole was very dry. Fortunately, the ground quickly turned to clay. That wouldn’t be good for planting in, but here I want to hold water, and clay is good for that.

There is a little seeping coming out right under where the creek is. If you look very very carefully at the picture you can see the wet spot in the middle. Well, I can see it even if you can’t. After taking the picture I dug it bigger and a bit deeper and hit another little spring. By tomorrow I expect that the hole will be mostly filled with water. Stay tuned.