A little background. First, I am an early to bed, early to rise kinda person. Second, I am a frugal gardener, especially when it comes to water. My city water is very expensive. I have fussed over getting a rain barrel set up, mainly because I was intimidated by the sawing and drilling and so on involved. I had gotten a barrel and the hardware stuff I needed but kept putting it off. After a dry spell, we are having showers off an on now. In desperation, two days ago I screwed up the courage to cut off my downspout and add a flexible extension to lead to the barrel. Barrel still needed a hole in the top and a spigot at the bottom. But rain was comming, so I pulled over a large trash can and placed it next to the downspout. A few quick showers filled the can! I was in awe!

Tonight, I am sleeping soundly when my neighbor decides to put on a little fireworks display (he is a city policeman, so no need to complain...besides he is a nice guy). My furball bed fellow got in my ear and barked her silly head off, causing me to spring up to see what was the matter. Now I'm wide awake so decide to go online and see what is going on in the world, especially the weather. There, just a few miles away from me on the radar map is a huge green blob with red and yellow center...and my makeshift rain barrel is full! So I just rushed outside and dipped out water to fill whatever 5 gal buckets I could find in the dark to make room for more water in the trashcan. Sigh...now I can go to sleep knowing I will have cans and buckets of water when I wake up in the morning.