Eureka!!

 The new system works and we have water flowing to all of our flowering plants at the front of the house.  Around the other three sides of the house we have bushes, lilys, hostas and similar plants that have been coming up and thriving (or at least surviving) for years.  They do not need a special watering system.  

But now we have a watering system on the front side of the house that my wonder spouse assembled with a little help from me.  He designed, organized and installed the whole thing, following diagrams and directions, and putting all the little pieces together.  My help was of the 'standing by to hold things or hand him things' variety. 

Here you can see one of the larger hoses and the little ones that run off from it to the individual plants.  If you look closely you can see the aqua top of the water spike in the pink plant and the red top of the water spike in the lily. 

Each plant has a small hose running directly to and attached to a little hollow spike which is inserted near the roots of the plant and carries the  water to the roots.  The whole system is on a timer which is scheduled to turn the water on for an hour beginning at 6:00am.  Tomorrow morning will be the first test of this part of the system.  Sometime in the next few days I will cover the exposed hoses with mulch and sometime in August I will post a picture of our flourishng flower beds.  If you do not see a picture sometime in August you can assume the worst, but I have high hopes.