A muddy day!

One of the most interesting things that we have done during the entire Nature Center experience is clearing Yellow Iris from the marsh.  The yellow iris are an invasive species that take over entire marshes and don’t allow anything else to grow, but are not to be confused with the helpful plant called a blue iris.  The first day we did this, we were told that we were going to get very muddy, and that’s exactly what happened! We were suited up in knee high boots and journeyed in to the marsh, with shovels in hand.  These plants were difficult to dig up, and had a lot of roots under the thick (and smelly) marsh mud. Every step in the mud was a big sludge sound as the mud absorbed the boots, but we worked through it and dug out garbage bags full of this invasive species.  We did this two more times during the experience, when the marshes were much drier, which made it even harder to dig out the roots, making a very stressful experience.  Only one person fell in to the deep marshy muds, and once again, it was Claire. It was a very interesting experience to say the least, but she got to go home early as she didn’t have a change of clothes!