These are some wildflowers that are growing in our woods. Dutchman's Breeches White fawnlily also called white trout lily Mayapples Cutleaf toothwort Bluebells
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Several days ago, we were walking out in our woods. We were playing in the creek and discovered some springs that were coming out of the creek bank. Right where one of the springs was, there was a lot of gray mud. (Interesting note: the water coming out of the spring was warmer than the water in the creek.) After looking at it closer, we decided it was actually clay. It was very sticky, not really like mud.
We brought back a bucket of it and made some pots and other things out of it. John started researching how to fire "wild" clay. Then we all started to get interested in firing the clay. The clay that we got from the creek was actually fairly clean. It didn't really have any rocks or grass in it. Some clay has to be cleaned (filter out all the junk), but we didn't clean ours. Having junk in your clay could cause it to crack while firing. After watching videos and reading on the internet, we were ready to start. First, John dug a pit in the ground, then he gathered lots of wood. We all made pots out of clay (except for Sammy). We actually used two different types of clay. We got some out of the creek bank and also some yellowish tan clay from a couple of different areas. John started a fire in the pit. I (Anne) was busy, so I couldn't really help a whole lot with this part. He let it burn down to hot coals, then put the pots into the pit. He added more fuel and kept the fire burning for five hours. It was really hot. After the fire had burned down to hot coals, we covered it with dirt and let it cool (the dirt got pretty warm, we kept feeling it to see if it was cooling). After supper, we went out and dug up the pots. It was actually dark out by then so we had to use flashlights to see. It was a lot of fun to dig up the pots, it was almost like a treasure hunt. The first one we dug up, we tapped it and it was hard. We dug them all up even though some were still warm. We probably should have let them cool longer. The cooling process is when the pots usually break because if they cool too fast they can crack. A coil pot that John had made was broken, but everything else was fine. I tested water in one of my pots that was cooled off. It got wet, but it held the water and most importantly, it did not turn back into mud! We brought the pots into the house for the night. The containers that we made can get wet, sort of like the terra-cotta flower pots. John is researching how to make a glaze out of ashes so that they will hold water properly. (John gets a lot of credit for this project, he did a most of the work.) We were surprised and excited that it actually worked and of course now we are going to try it again. Hopefully it works as well as it did the first time and we can improve our pottery skills.... WE STARTED BIG FIRES. We started clearing small trees and brush in the early spring. We burned the prairie a few days ago (about 50 acres). We had the fire department out there to help us if anything went wrong. There were paths of mowed grass all around the spots where we had to burn and along the paths there were big clumps of grass. That's what we lit with matches. Then we used sticks to pick up some burning stuff and spread it around. We would do that until it got too hot, then we would have to move on and start other fires somewhere else. The fire was starting to spread where we didn't want it to spread, but those were small fires mostly, so we stomped them out. We also used sticks to put them out. All that smoke made it look like big clouds in the sky! When some of the grass burned it sounded like falling water. The whole thing took about all morning to do. I kind of wish that I had brought the drone to video it.
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