CMO tanks full

CMO received nearly an inch of rain last night so all tanks are full. 

I run water into this "cienega" whenever I have extra, like today.

This concreted tank is the largest, now with 9 feet of water in it.

This stuccoed tank is a little smaller and leaks so I use it first for watering my oasis.

This "lower" dirt tank holds water almost as good as the stucco tank. When the stucco tank gets low I pump what water is left in this dirt tank into the stucco tank. There's an "upper" dirt tank (not pictured) that I can pump into this to replenish it, but the upper one leaks out in a week or two,  so I try to empty is as soon as possible. Meanwhile I planted some native trees around it that thrive. Keep in mind that all this is at 4000' elevation, high in the Christmas Mountains, not along the Rio Grande River somewhere.

This pond isn't used for anything except wildlife. No water goes over my diversion dams until all my tanks are full. A few days ago a Sora foraged among the reeds in this pond. (See a picture of the Sora in a previous post). The three diversion dams have water backed up all along the drainage so a wonderful habitat is developing there as well. Mostly hackberries, soapberries, desert willow, acacias, juniper, sumac, persimmons, and stuff like that.

This is the lower dam where the runoff heads into a large canyon and off my property. I don't have a pump installed there anymore so I was concerned that the persimmon trees would die standing in 6 feet of water, but they continue to thrive. You can barely make them out on the left edge of the dam. Their trunks are totally submerged, but I've learned not to stress about it. They didn't grow there until the dam was built about 14 years ago.  The water will clear up in a few days, but then there'll be a mosquito issue. Since the gambusias (mosquito fish) are in my tanks and escape into the arroyo during heavy rains, they'll eventually multiply enough to take care of the problem, but for a week or so mosquitoes will be annoying, to say the least.