Short CMO trip

No sooner got to CMO today than I read on a local Facebook group that someone is giving away apricots. Ours all froze this year and we were so disappointed. So I'm going back to town to pick and dry apricots. Juggling my life is exhausting. I had planned to pump the rest of the water from the lower dirt tank into the stucco tank, which has now leaked and evaporated out a foot and will hold it. But I'm more likely to get more rain this year than I am to get more apricots this year. The fruit has priority.

Coming down today I saw a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher nest along the highway south of Alpine.

And at CMO it was over 100° so the Bell's Vireo was trying to keep its eggs from overheating.

Remember earlier this year Tumbleweed Smith interviewed me for his radio program. Here's an article he mentioned me in. (Underline by me) And by the way, my "bird sanctuary" is not on Terlingua Ranch. Not on "the Terlingua Ranch" either. The less written about me the more accurate it is. LOL

Later from Alpine:

I went to pick more apricots but what was left on the tree was too high for me to reach. So I filled two dryers with what Hugh had picked earlier, and the small bucketful I picked.

Before I drove away from CMO I went into the upper dirt tank to prepare it for the next rain. Had hoped to wait until it cooled down, but felt the urgency, so I did it in the triple-digit heat.

Before

 Basically, I dug the basin out of the mud and then raised it up a bit. As silt accumulates in the tank it has to be raised. The option would be to clean out the tank, but I don't feel a need to do that. If it holds less water as a result of not cleaning it out, then the water goes over the spillway and into the lower dirt tank. That's where I end up pumping it anyway. The negative to that is that the less the upper tank holds, the more that potentially overflows from the lower dirt tank and that excess ends up running across the road and washing it out, which is the reason we built the lower dirt tank in the first place. It doesn't happen every year, but it happens more than is good for the road.

After

So my day wasn't wasted. I also serviced the hummingbird feeders.