Let's see how everything is looking at the oasis (May 2026)

[00:00:00]Well, welcome back to the Timeline Ranch. It's a beautiful morning. Let's take a walk around the pond and see how it's looking after 2 months of not being here.

[00:00:07]Now, it's very pleasant temperatures this morning. Wind's not too strong, little breeze.

[00:00:13]It looks fairly green, but that's only around the pond mainly and this creek here. It's been quite dry.

[00:00:23]Uh we haven't received any water that would cause anything to run into the pond, but it looks like we've had a couple light rain showers here and there.

[00:00:33]Let's go for a walk.

[00:00:37]Like I see this area right here along the cactus garden where the main creek the South Creek, I call it, feeds the pond.

[00:00:45]So, has some water traveling underground. That's why all this is looking real healthy through here.

[00:00:55]That green leaf five eyes has come back almost like carpet from the light rains.

[00:01:04]Looks like we missed a pretty heavy bloom on this prickly pear here. It's got a lot of fruit on it.

[00:01:36]Quite a few white-winged dove and prairie falcons this morning around the pond.

[00:01:46]The scale sleeve goldeneye came in nicely.

[00:02:07]>> Let's take a look at our palm over here in the creek bed.

[00:02:15]Now, the other day, this is where that western diamondback rattlesnake was at, a little juvenile.

[00:02:27]But, it hasn't rained enough to activate all those seeds from that sorghum that I threw out from those seeds that had the weevils in it.

[00:02:37]There should have been sorghum growing all in here if we were getting enough rain.

[00:02:42]Another skeleton leaf goldeneye looks fairly nice there.

[00:02:47]So, our palm tree is in stress.

[00:02:54]You can tell by how the leaves are closed up on it.

[00:03:03]They should be open.

[00:03:06]Looking something like that.

[00:03:11]It has had a bit of growth, not much though.

[00:03:16]Um, due to lack of water.

[00:03:20]So, I'm going to be giving these, all these trees I planted the last time, a good watering.

[00:03:25]And probably throw some water on the existing trees.

[00:03:30]Wouldn't hurt.

[00:03:33]Another skeleton leaf goldeneye on the backside of this main dam on the creek.

[00:03:50]Yeah, I'm really liking how this area is developing right here.

[00:03:55]The desert olive looks very healthy from that water it's traveling underground along with these yucca faxonianus here.

[00:04:10]I still need to build that other leaky weir dam right through here.

[00:04:16]And that's all I've really planned on doing in this area.

[00:04:20]I don't think it needs anything more than that.

[00:04:28]These rocks are locked in nicely.

[00:04:30]So, I found if you place quite large stones on the direction that the water is coming from and then smaller ones behind it, they seem to lock in quite well.

[00:04:51]Yeah, this is a nice little area right here.

[00:04:56]You can see this creosote starting to dry out some.

[00:05:01]And we've got the Texas state bird right there. It's a mockingbird.

[00:05:26]This is one of the honey mesquites we're turning into a tree that has an upright trunk for the most part. And it's looking quite healthy. It's got a nice full leaf canopy.

[00:05:41]I think on this trip I'm going to take off a few of these lower ones here just to make it focus more on the upward growth.

[00:05:53]Definitely liking how some of these branches are looking though.

[00:06:00]Now this one's nice and healthy. This is going to lock this rock in real good, too.

[00:06:10]Here on the backside of that dam, it's looking pretty good, too. Nice and green.

[00:06:16]Everything's coming in nicely over here.

[00:06:18]Helping lock everything together.

[00:06:25]So over here our little fenced area, we planted one Phoenix dactyliferae date palm right there.

[00:06:33]It's in stress about like the one that's in the creek over there. Not enough water.

[00:06:41]This Moringa, which if you caught that one video on my last trip, I nicked the bark and it it was nice and green.

[00:06:49]It was definitely alive. Um we haven't received enough rain to make it decide to come back for this season.

[00:06:57]I'll be giving it some water this trip, along with the palm.

[00:07:04]It's beautiful sight to have a body of water like this in the Chihuahuan Desert.

[00:07:10]I'd say it's dropped about 60 cm, around 2 ft.

[00:07:15]This is if you caught that video where my little girl was getting out of the water when it was freezing cold.

[00:07:21]Uh she was climbing up on this little ledge here.

[00:07:24]So, about 2 ft down from where it was.

[00:07:29]Lots of little water bugs hitting the top there of the water.

[00:07:34]That's some bubbles coming up from the bottom, methane.

[00:07:48]>> So, the last trip, if you caught it, I trimmed some of this baccharis over here. I took about a third of it out.

[00:07:54]And I'm I was trying to get it to bush out more, to maybe make some habitat for birds to nest in.

[00:08:01]And it is bushing out over there pretty good.

[00:08:04]We'll take a look at it here in a minute.

[00:08:08]I threw all the cuttings from it in the water.

[00:08:12]Um so, the the anaerobic bacteria can break down that organic material.

[00:08:17]And some of the baccharis decided it was not ready to die yet, and it's grown roots floating on the water and starting to grow directly in the water.

[00:08:30]It's still quite deep right here.

[00:08:33]I'd say we're oh, at least 3 m.

[00:08:39]Almost 10 ft.

[00:08:43]deep.

[00:08:46]Interesting plant.

[00:08:50]So, here's one of our little pecan trees we planted last July, 2025, about 10 months ago.

[00:08:57]The leaf cutter bees have been hard at work cutting its leaves off.

[00:09:33]Yeah, they've done a number on these pecan trees.

[00:09:44]Still looking fairly green along here.

[00:09:46]Mainly baccharis salifolia, baby ones.

[00:09:50]And grasses.

[00:09:56]Here's the other pecan tree that was planted the same time as the other one, the little one.

[00:10:21]Seems like the leaf cutter bees haven't been as tough on this one. They did get a few areas on it on that lower portion.

[00:10:30]Seems like they're not interested very much in the smaller leaves. This one seems to be a little bit in stress. The leaves aren't full size.

[00:10:43]There's a tamarisk ramosissima coming in there, salt cedar. I'll be pulling that out of there for sure. Not going to let those started here.

[00:10:53]Don't want them in my ecosystem.

[00:11:05]It's a really nice day.

[00:11:14]Picture perfect view.

[00:11:27]Yeah, I got to be real cautious going through here. Could to some more of those rattlesnakes.

[00:11:45]So, here's another one of our pecan trees. This is one of the older ones.

[00:11:50]It's been hit by the leafcutter bee a few times.

[00:11:55]Um looks like in different stages. Down there it didn't attack the midsection of the leaves, but it went after the upper section again.

[00:12:25]It's put on a little growth, but not as much as I'd hoped.

[00:12:31]I was really hoping this pond would have caught a little rainstorm to put some more water back in it, keep it at the same level it was back in March.

[00:12:49]Seems like this deal had the opportunity to go to seed.

[00:12:55]Nice, big, healthy seed head.

[00:13:07]There's our original pecan tree that was planted at the ranch.

[00:13:14]Leafcutter bees have hit it pretty hard.

[00:13:16]It's had just the slightest bit of growth, maybe 25 mm vertically.

[00:13:28]Yeah, leaf cutter bees have really hit this one hard.

[00:14:00]I'm still hopeful it'll be out of the top of this fencing by the end of the grow season.

[00:14:05]Uh monsoonal season starts here in about 18 days.

[00:14:12]June 15th is the start of the official start of the monsoonal season in this area, and it runs till September 30th.

[00:14:27]No signs of the fathead minnows.

[00:14:29]I'm sure they're still in there.

[00:14:33]Lots of food for them, all the water bugs, and algae.

[00:14:40]No signs of the azolla. Doesn't look like it took the first time I put it in there.

[00:14:47]Maybe um maybe this batch that I brought this trip will do the trick.

[00:14:53]Had a subscriber mentioned he tried to establish it in his ponds and was having issues cuz he's got mildly sloping banks, and the wind was blowing up on the bank, so it was having a hard time getting established.

[00:15:07]Whereas, he said, you know, maybe my pond has a better chance due to these more, you know, almost vertical walls I have.

[00:15:17]Which makes good sense to me on that one. We'll see. I've got a good bucket of it, so hopefully that's enough to get it established.

[00:15:26]And the water's quite a bit warmer now.

[00:15:28]I haven't checked the temperature, but it's definitely much warmer than it was.

[00:15:34]It was sitting at about 5° C, about 40° F back in March.

[00:15:42]Uh, just missed one of the giant water bugs coming to the top.

[00:15:51]toe biters There's one of the mulberries we planted on this last trip.

[00:15:57]It's in stress. The leaves are small.

[00:16:02]And the leaf cutter bee has been added over here as well.

[00:16:27]It has had a little bit of growth.

[00:16:30]I'll be giving it some water this trip as well, the rest of them.

[00:16:43]Got a fairly healthy cattail growing here.

[00:16:46]There's been enough moisture on the back side of this retainer wall that I built to support it pretty good.

[00:16:58]Again, the mulberries leaves are stunted in size due to the lack of water.

[00:17:06]And some of the ends have actually started dying back at the bottom there.

[00:17:12]I'll give it some water this trip.

[00:17:15]I'll be back in July, first part of July which will be probably about five weeks from now.

[00:17:25]What I'm shooting for if everything works out.

[00:17:33]That was a house finch.

[00:17:35]A male.

[00:17:37]Males have red on them.

[00:17:45]Here's the third of the mulberries we planted.

[00:17:49]Leaf cutter bee was over here a little bit but looks like he spared this one somewhat.

[00:17:55]This one looks fairly decent compared to the other two.

[00:18:03]This is some more of the backrest branches that I threw in. You can see it's starting to grow too some of it.

[00:18:09]Looks like a bird was dive from something. It may have been one of those prairie falcons but looks like it just killed it if so didn't get it.

[00:18:35]You see quite a bit of roots growing out of that backrest that was thrown in the water.

[00:19:03]Last night there was a bunch of those toe biter water bugs in that backrest brush.

[00:19:12]This portion probably another month is going to be dry.

[00:19:20]I'm probably going to reach in here with the excavator.

[00:19:24]I'd like to take out the rest of these spoils right here. This There's about 2 ft 60 cm of spoils that was left from that trip when I dug the bottom of this pond section over here out.

[00:19:36]Didn't have time. I just pulled it up into this area.

[00:19:43]And Christmas time I took off, you know, most of the spoils out of here, but I left this little access road so I can haul some more out of here when I get a chance to dig on this portion of the pond again.

[00:19:55]I'm probably going to clean this up some more. Take some more of that out of there.

[00:19:59]This was the original level at that point.

[00:20:10]So I'm going to have to officially call this Mission Texas almond tree dead.

[00:20:25]This Mission Texas almond trees dead as well.

[00:20:40]This one's not looking too bad.

[00:21:09]Obviously the leafcutter bees weren't in here due to this fine mesh screen.

[00:21:20]>> [snorts] >> I'll throw some water on it this trip.

[00:21:24]I was really hoping we'd get some rains in the earlier part of this grow season to get everything going good before the heavy rains kick in.

[00:21:38]So, this portion of the pond over here went completely dry, which gives me the opportunity to dig deeper on it without having to pump some water.

[00:21:57]Lots of bird droppings around, like usual.

[00:22:01]Helping bring fertility and seeds in from other areas in.

[00:22:15]Getting some nice stands of Baccharis salicifolia established along the edge here. You can see where the water line is.

[00:22:22]Over there and there.

[00:22:27]There was some cattails coming in over here, but looks like it got too dry for them. They ended up dying out.

[00:22:35]The mule deer may have eaten the tops off of them as well. There's almost no signs of them being there at all now.

[00:22:43]So, here's our largest honey mesquite returned in into a tree with a upright trunk.

[00:22:50]I'm wanting the scaffolding main scaffolding to start about 2 m, 6 and 1/2 ft or so off the ground.

[00:22:59]It's in stress. It's not getting quite as much water as it would like.

[00:23:03]The leaves have thinned out some.

[00:23:07]It's put on some growth, though.

[00:23:10]Got a lot of seeds on it.

[00:23:21]I'm sure the pack rats and white-throated wood rats will appreciate these seeds.

[00:23:31]There's some of those house finches right there.

[00:23:48]Let's go right over here, where that other palm tree was planted.

[00:23:55]It's in stress, as well. You can see some of the fronds are dying back on it.

[00:24:03]I'll give it a little water in this trip, as well.

[00:24:10]I planted some tepary beans in here and that other fenced area, and no signs of life from them. Doesn't look like we've got enough rain to saturate the ground to get them to start growing.

[00:24:25]And over here, we've got some sorghum from last year that didn't die out all the way.

[00:24:32]Looks like it's coming back, trying to get a good seed head in again. The second one. This one was eaten by the mule deer last year.

[00:24:42]And we've got another one doing the same down here.

[00:24:47]Another one.

[00:24:50]No new sprouts, though. It's been too dry.

[00:24:54]There's some of the cattails that are still around.

[00:24:57]You can see probably mule deer have been eating on them.

[00:25:01]Could be Barbary sheep as well.

[00:25:05]Even javelina.

[00:25:10]Got a pretty good little stand of them right here.

[00:25:13]They're starting to chase that water down.

[00:25:17]They've all been chewed pretty good there.

[00:25:24]Let's go a little further on our little bank here.

[00:25:32]The sedge has been heavily eaten down through here.

[00:25:39]Almost looks like it's been weed eated.

[00:25:49]There's a little bit right there at the water line something didn't want to lean over the water to get.

[00:25:59]It still has its tops on them.

[00:26:26]So, no signs of triops or fairy shrimp.

[00:26:30]I believe the water bug population of this pond >> [snorts] >> ate all of them.

[00:26:41]It's not really their environment.

[00:26:48]Well, all in all I would say it still looks fairly decent out here for not having any rain.

[00:26:53]Hopefully the monsoon season this year brings the rains back and fills the pond up so everything can flourish.

[00:27:01]Time will tell.

[00:27:03]Well, if you like what I'm doing out here and you want to help speed this project up, there's a few ways to do that in the description of the video.

[00:27:08]Buy me coffee is one. There's also Amazon.

[00:27:10]All of it helps get me out here faster to make this project go a lot faster.

[00:27:14]Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next one.