Back at it

Came to the oasis early this morning rested and ready to save some water. The settling pond loses water the fastest so I only had about a third of it left, but I hooked my garden hose to my little pump and pumped it to various trees at the oasis. Added some to the dragonfly pond although it doesn't hold very well either.

Settling pond. Diversion dam center; spillway into big tank right

I think the intensity of the storm caused the intakes on both of my 3" pumps in the two dirt tanks to get silted in. They wouldn't suck up water. So on the dirt tank closest to the oasis I put in my 3" electric pump, strung the hose across the road and into the stucco tank to top it off. It wasn't down much since my new tank had way more water left in it than I had thought.

Pumping from lower dirt tank

Across road

To stucco tank

Stucco tank full and so far not leaking

The biggest surprise of the day, other than the stucco tank barely losing water, was seeing so many Great Pondhawks. Usually, I'm lucky to see one, and today I saw at least 6. Either I'm becoming a better oder, or there were a lot of them.

More hard work planned for tomorrow. Gonna try to unstick the intake on the upper dirt tank, without drowning. Then I'm going to fill the tank that has all the hex tiles in it. I put about a foot of water into it before dark today. Tomorrow I'm going to wade in it and remove the tiles that are waterlogged and won't float. Then if I have any water left in the settling pond I'll pump it out. I'm exhausted but happy to have water. It's hard to even remember how bleak and hopeless it felt less than a week ago.

Here's part of the upper dirt tank. Even if I can't get the water out of it you can see the hackberry thicket there is thriving, so not a total waste of water.

Since the rain the water in it has gone down a couple of feet but it still has 4-5' left in it. If it's over my head I won't be able to attempt to get the intake out of the mud. I really dread getting into that tank though.