My Sanctuary

In the back of our house is a hillside that is a too steep to mow so when we moved here we planted something called crown vetch. It's a fast growing plant (that I now call a nasty weed) that covered the hillside. And then for the next many years, we faithfully ignored it. More and more weeds made their home on my hillside such that a little more than a year ago, I was calling it my weedside and decided a change needed to be made.

I had read in the paper that the plants that used to cover Iowa were hardly able to be found anymore and I thought it would be a good idea to plant Iowa natives and wildflowers on my hillside. I asked around at nearly every greenhouse I visited, I contacted the County Conservation people, I researched on where to find these plants and surprisingly it was difficult to find anyone with a lot of knowledge about this. Finally, I was talking to the greenhouse lady at the Woodsmith Store and she told me about someone who could perhaps help me and where he worked. I contacted him and truthfully he wasn't a whole lot of help either, but I hit the jackpot with the place he worked. Des Moines Forage and Turf is where I found the answer to my hillside. They told me they don't usually work with inviduals, they do more work for corporations, farmers, golf courses, much bigger places than my hillside, but they had bags of seed called "Color Iowa Wild" that they would sell me. These are not like the little packs of seeds you buy at the home improvement stores or even the greenhouses. Those have about 2% seeds and 98% filler. Read the label, it's true. The seeds I got from Des Moines Forage and Turf were pure seed. Since we were a little late in the season for this, I got one bag and after mowing and Round Upping, we planted last September. Then this spring, we planted another bag. I didn't know what to expect. I thought maybe we would have a couple flowers, but it turned out to be fantastic. The Round Up didn't work as well as we had hoped on the vetch so I'm weeding that and some other nasty stuff, but there is more out there than I imagined for our first year. While there is a lot of beauty out there, there are still quite a number of weeds and it's been a lot of work; I spend anywhere from 1-3 hours out there every day that I'm home. I have such plans for that hillside. I want to add bird feeders, bird houses and bird baths. I even learned how to make a butterfly bath with a dish, sand and stones. I want it to be a haven for winged creatures. I see bees out there and I enthusiastically exhort them to go forth and pollinate. While my hillside has been a lot of work, it's also been my sanctuary this summer.

This is where I go to pray, to think, to reflect, to ponder, to remember, to praise. As I weed, I see so much evidence of God's handiwork in nature. Little bitty toads are quite common and one morning one hopped on my foot. I thought it was a chunk of dirt until it hopped away. There was also the night, just as day was ending and the sun about to set, that I saw a deer about 1oo yards away from me. He watched me for a while and I watched him, then I went to the house and he jumped over the fence and away he went. Mark tells me there are probably snakes out there, but so far I have not seen a single one and I'm very thankful for that. Toads are reptilian enough, snakes would make it a bit less of a sanctuary.

The hillside is where God gave me the words for my dad's service long before I even knew he would get sick, which at the time was a bit puzzling and sort of uncomfortable, but now I understand why those came. I needed time to be prepared. As I was pulling weeds, after learning about my dad's probable cancer, the thought came that this could all go fast. A few hours later he went into the hospital with massive lung clots and a few hours after that suffered the stroke. I wish now I had left the hillside at that moment and gone in the house and called my dad. But, while I thought "fast", I expected weeks or months, not hours. A reminder to write that letter, make that phone call or send that e-mail immediately, don't wait. Fast can be faster than we think.

I was out on my hillside the morning Mark came to tell me that while we were in Ohio, Capi's brother had called and left a message saying Capi had lost her battle with cancer and her suffering was over. Shortly after Mark left, a hummingbird came and hovered next to me for a few seconds before flying off. I love hummingbirds and hadn't seen very many of them this year.

Over a year ago in the spring and summer when I started thinking about what to do with my hillside I didn't know I would need a sanctuary. I just wanted to improve my landscaping. But God knew I would need a place where I would see Him, where I could talk with Him and know He heard me. I believe the thoughts, the hummingbird, the deer, the toads, the success and beauty of the wildflowers are all gifts from Him. We took 2 bags of pretty plain looking seeds, spread them on a weedy hillside and with that, God created a miracle.