The results are in

Didn't start at 5am, I forgot that I was going to drive my Dad to LAX for a flight to China at 1am, I didn't get home until 2 and there was no way I was getting up in 3 hours to measure water in dirt.  However, I did get up at 7:30 (that's about as late as I can sleep) and set out to begin the test.
I grabbed a 1" diameter pipe, marked an 8" line, drove down with a twisting motion into a bed and then......... couldn't get the dirt out.  Complete failure.  I tried to ram it out with a large dowel, I tried tapping to loosen the dirt, I tried everything I could think of but that dirt was staying.  To the Unisaw to rip a 6" gash down a length  of PVC pipe so I could spread the "drill" to release the core within and this is when I checked myself.  Overkill, all of this.... complete overkill.  I light up with a technical challenge, it get's me going and I realized the focus had left the dead plants and shifted to creating a custom tool to take perfect soil samples!
After putting away my tools I got started with plan B which is to use a simple trowel to get to the stuff down 6-7".  Here's the stuff:

1. 8:30 am (EW2) - 6" down and bone dry (this is bad)  Evidence of dried leaves and the soil had that great texture soil gets when worms have done their job.  Still, it was dry.
2. 8:42 am (EW2) - proceeded to manually water for 10 solid minutes, walking back and forth down the row watering as evenly as possible.  I'm thinking "This shit is wet" I mean I really soaked it, I almost felt guilty as if I had done something really wrong, it was that much water.  But I needed data, I needed to know water was getting down there.
3. 9:30 am (EW2) - 6" deep sample taken and STILL dry, only the top 1-1/2" was wet!  I still can't explain this, the water went somewhere.  It wasn't running down the sides of the bed, it (mostly) stayed on the bed and soaked in.  This is still odd, but I can say the dirt was dry.
4. 9:35 am (EW2) - cultivated with the single tine cultivator (great tool) to break up the surface.  This resulted in some soil spreading down and out from the edges which I then quickly dragged back up the bed creating a short lip that would serve to ensure the water stays ON the bed.
5. 9:40 am (EW2) - another 10 minutes of soaking, same thing
6. 11:30 am (EW2) - still visually wet on top despite the warm temperature.  6" deep sample shows that the soil is thoroughly saturated (finally)
7. Went to work, then mountain biking after work so I didn't test anymore.  I'll take a sample tomorrow AM and see what the water has done.

No relevant photos, just Chui