Playing (carefully) with fire. Exploring the garden in the dark. A seed experiment, searching with torches and making our own plants.
327 – Playing with fire (carefully) in the back garden
Saturday 8 February. Cloudy. 5°C
Probably should start off with a few safety warnings on this one. It’s definitely one of the more dangerous we’ve done but B and I are both quite risk averse and instinctively cautious so it felt safe for us, if that makes sense.
After the trials and tribulations of the last week in terms of it being cold, wet and B being unwilling to get out I needed something a bit different. We’ve had a few fires as part of challenges so far (see 346 – Exploring willow sticks & 357 – Sunrise on the beach ) but none with the fire as the main point. I thought this was probably a good moment given the generally rubbish temperatures. B is keen and has lots of ideas – mainly about what to put on the fire. My first reaction is to say ‘no – you have to do it this way’ but then I held back. Maybe it’s better to try her ideas and see what happens. Carefully of course!
She wants to put the charcoal in the middle and then gets some willow sticks (346 – Exploring willow sticks) which we snap into bits and put round the edge. We get a few pieces of kindling spreading out from the centre and in the middle put the firelighter. Then she gathers lavender leaves and pines from the Christmas tree (see Playing with the Christmas Tree) and sprinkles them liberally on the top. It looks very pretty. She lights it carefully.
I’m a bit surprised it lights, to be honest, but it does. She’s got three bits of kindling leading out from the firelighter and they catch and burn. She carefully adds sticks and then eventually another firelighter trying to get a stick to burn from one to the other. She learns quickly that she can move bits but has to be careful (see above about this maybe not being suitable activity for those less wussy!). It gets a bit smoky and I say it’s probably the lavender or the pine needles as they’re more wet. We agree we’ll try and remove some of them.
We’re down to the bottom of the box of fire lighters so I throw the little bits left over on the fire…. Which immediately is full of rolling blanket waves of smoke. Queue some panic. Our neighbours are, thankfully, very tolerant! Maybe not a challenge to repeat at regular intervals without a larger garden.
As the smoke clears we dig out the marshmallows and B gets expert at toasting them quite quickly. She works out which is the hottest bit of the fire and where they won’t cook. After perfecting the art of doing one she tries adding more to the stick.
We try cracking nuts and burning the shells but it’s not as interesting. There’s a layer of ash over the coals from the lavender, pine cones and sticks and we blow it and it rises up and looks like it’s snowing. When we’re fed up of eating the marshmallows we try burning them and they melt in a fantastic gooey mess.
By the time we go in we’ve been there a good 45 minutes at least and the fire is burning down. I point out to B how much warmer it is now it is red glowing coals rather than just lit flame. We head inside warm and bouncy.
326 – Playing in the sand dunes >
< 328 – Playing with bubbles in the dark
360 – Exploring the garden in the dark
Monday 6 January. Clear skies. 4°C
Our first night time adventure and we didn’t go far. B tired and full of first day back at school after the Christmas break. We played it quiet. We put seeds out as it got dark to see if anything would come in the night to eat them (nothing did). Then explored the garden with the torches to see if we could find any bugs (none at all – it’s almost freezing out there). We did find some green shoots though, where the daffodils have started to come up. B decided to make her own fake flower and we found an empty nut case which we filled with lavender leaves and buried in the ground so it looked like a real plant. It was a really nice half hour. Not the most exciting challenge but it was great to see B connecting with the environment. Think we might do this one again at regular intervals.
I’m realising that school days are going to bring their own challenges. We’ve been free to do what we like during the holidays but now, with a 9 to 3.30pm school day and it getting dark by 4.30pm we are very limited in what we can do and when we can do it. Added to which, B is knackered first day back and has no energy. She enjoys today though and is still enthusiastic. Hopefully we can find other fun things to do that don’t take up too much time as we go forward.
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