Remember when we asked – How are lakes formed? and God said – “Oh, that’s easy – watch this!” , and we got flooded? Well . . . . We were instructed that taking a nice slice of earth at least a foot deep for soil experiments would help us on our quest discovering How Lakes Hold Water.  Enter the back hoe! Our trusty landlord and his crew showed up 2 days ago to dig us some French drains around the property – and Bingo. Simple Soil Sample Extraction! I sent Nate and Jon out in the rain, before they filled the holes up – Jon – as usual – got an idea all on his own and went off on his own way. Here’s a little story from Jon:

About a month or two ago, I asked my mom, “How does water stay in a lake?” , because in our old house (In the Central Oregon High Desert), I would get a bucket of water and it would sink. Devils Lake holds the water.

I went out with my mom in the rain to dig some dirt for our study – and it was a wee bit boring, it was fun cause we got to play in the mud, but we had to wash our hands like 8 times, so I was sad. I didn’t want to get more thick mud on me. (Our house water was turned off for the day – so it made clean up pretty cold with only the lake and clean settled gutter run off from a pink garbage can for water.)

I saw that there was three layers of the dirt, the first one had gravel, the second one had compost mud and the third one had cool clay stuff.

I was remembering from summers on the Tumalo River that there’s this clay, mud, and rock thing all put together, it is really soft when wet but when it is dry it gets really hard. It makes the best waterfalls, if you like it, clay stuff , you can make a little cup, all you need is a bucket of water and some clay – it will hold the water.

My mom was keep on saying to my brother, don’t tell your brother, it is the joy of figuring it out, and then I thought of the clay stuff, inside of our sand pit that holds the water, and I thought if I got a cup, and a big chunk of clay and stuck it in there, it would be solid all around and the water would not sink in.

Then, I got two more cups, and put in just gravel, and one just compost mud.

The water sank in the gravel fast, the compost mud took more time to sink, and then when it did, it absorbed the water. There was more water on the bottom of the gravel, and only a little in the compost mud.

(Jon was trying to explain to me his project – I am in the middle of making Garlic Broccoli Beef – without water – and he is doing MUD PROJECTS next to my sauce. . . .  Trying to stay focused on how exciting it was . . .)

Mom – But once I saw and understood what he was proving – He said that he predicted that the clay would hold water – and his prediction was right! Isn’t it interesting that the water got absorbed into the compost hummus dirt.

Jon – Speed Weird Dude – Said – Why are you taking pictures of mud? Take pictures of me for the blog. I have flames! and Guns! and a Motor! And my car is orange. . . . .That’s it.

This morning – It was interesting, that the water had either evaporated or seeped into the clay, the dirt on the rocks was powered, and the compost had settled in, and there was no longer water in the bottom.

Jon put in two more tablespoons of water in each cup this morning – the clay held it – the rocks let it seep through quickly, and the compost took about 2 minutes to absorb the water.

Mom – So Jon. How does Devils Lake hold water?

Jon – I don’t know.

Mom- Really. Rolls eyes. . . . .

Jon – I know a little bit. The clay and the rocks and the dirt gets mixed together in the rains and the winds and the floods, it gets mixed up in Devils Lake. It is like a tarp in a hole with water in it, but that’s the cool part, it’s like God’s Tarp with all the leaves rocks mud, forming a layer that forms clay that holds all the water in.

(Jon – Is that it? I like this school.)

Parts 3- 17 coming up – How does the lake keep full? What does the layers of dirt mean for our yard and garden? What were our soil study results? How does silt and clay mingle with rock to form that tarp?