Creation on Sawmill Ridge

I want to pause from the normal blog and talk about God’s handiwork that we see here on Sawmill Ridge on a daily basis. We have truly been blessed. Part of me wishes we had done this years ago, but it was not time then.

We are not city people. We don’t need fancy things. But we do love nature. While nature certainly does not take the place of church, it’s hard to sit on our back deck at night and not be in awe of God’s power. When nothing seems to be right, sitting outside reminds me that God keeps His amazing universe running, and He’s probably got my little problems under control. Jeremiah 32:17 says, “Ah Lord God! It is You who have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for You.”

One night our son, Zak, and his family were visiting, and we were sitting on the back deck. We turned on our spotlight, startling probably 8 deer which went running from all around our backyard – including a little fawn from right below our deck. That same night, Lexi saw her first meteorite shoot across the sky.

We have deer visit every night since Noel takes corn to their feeder each evening. We have seen some pretty good arguments between them as they can’t always seem to sweetly share with one another. They are quite used to us and don’t even run away when noisy grandchildren are on the deck. We have an understanding so far that we feed them in the back, but they leave my flowers alone in the front. Not one flower has been eaten so far (fingers and toes remain crossed!) This one that you see standing alone was quietly listening to me explain this deer law to her, as she was moving to the front yard, but she listened and went back to her allowed domain.

And the hummingbirds keep us laughing. Such selfish little things! We don’t know how many we have right now, but we have seen 7 at a feeder at a time. Because it is almost time for their migration, I put an extra feeder out. But this one little guy will not let any other hummer drink from it. He stands guard constantly. If another kind of bird who doesn’t want his sugar water even comes close, he is chased away. They are known for their constant movement, but not this little guy. He sits on the edge of the railing most of the day just waiting for the one who decides to brave it. I had to just dump it and freshen the food because he is the only one allowed to drink it. The other one gets filled often, and if it runs out, one of them will fly to the window to tell me about it.

If you ever doubt God’s involvement in the world, I invite you to our back deck as the sun goes down. First, the sunsets are especially amazing to Noel; God is such an artist. Most nights end on the deck watching the sky. Nearly every night we see meteorites shooting across the sky, sometimes in spectacular streaks across the entire sky. We regularly see Venus and Mars and sometimes Saturn. We are trying to learn the constellations but don’t understand the artistic analysis of whoever imagined you could see ladies on chairs and lizards in the sky. Lately, maybe you have seen the Starlink satellite “trains” that can be viewed for a couple nights after they are launched, before they spread out into their own orbit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to Google it. No, Elon Musk doesn’t belong in the same category as God, but it is still an amazing sight to see this train of satellites crossing the sky and then just disappear; we get our internet from those satellites, so I imagine that download speed just picking up a little every time one goes by. Besides the train of satellites, we probably see a dozen or more satellites each night. We have seen the International Space Station twice just this week, from 250 miles away. It is always a reminder to me to pray for those on board.

There is no shortage of frogs here on our ridge. They are crazy loud at night. However, did you know if you turn the spotlight on and then turn it off, for a brief second, all frogs stop making noise? God said the number of the children of Israel would be as the sand of the sea and could not be numbered. He could have just as easily said they would be as the frogs in the woods that cannot be numbered! We would love to know how many frogs we actually hear in the summer evenings. When we don’t enjoy frogs is when we lift the lid to the hot tub, and one is innocently looking at us, wondering why we are disturbing his little sauna.

I have been learning about snakes, so we know which ones are venomous. My goal was to pick up one snake this summer. I know I cheated with the gloves – but I was already wearing them. Ok, so he is a bit on the tiny side, but I did it; it was a start! This is a little brown decay snake. I was hoping to be brave enough to go a little bigger, but I honestly did not see any other one. We did see a couple copperheads last year, and no, I do not have a desire to pick those up. But give me a good, long king snake, and I’m quite determined to have the courage to do it. Maybe.

When we moved here, the land was all trees actually, trees and trash. We walked back into the woods and knew a view was there. Over the last couple of years, we have cleared trees, but just in the last few months, Noel has taken down the ones that gave us this beautiful view. There are a couple dead ones and a couple more that need to go to widen the view a bit. That wood becomes heat for our house as well as doors and the trim for our house, my compost boxes, and many other things that Noel can imagine when he has the time.

Cutting down the trees usually is not the hard part. The hard part comes when the stump needs to come out. Noel does grind some of them, but others come out completely. It can take a couple hours and the ingenuity of Noel to move them. Another use for those trees being cut down – a lever for Mini to help twist that stump free. Then the next trick is getting that big stump down the hill to the burn pile – where it will never completely burn. I don’t watch as Noel is driving on only the front of Mini’s treads all the way down because of the weight of the huge stump & roots. (I understand the arm holding the stump keeps him from actually being able to tip over; I know it in theory, but I do not watch.)

The problem with owning 11 acres of wooded land and then taking portions of the woods away is you have rapidly growing weeds everywhere that a building or tree is not taking the space. Rapidly growing. We don’t have the time to maintain that weedy jungle; nor do we have the money to sod it all and continue to water it. Gravel is our friend. We have enough parking area now that we could have quite the business. This is Noel’s answer. I don’t particularly like this answer, but I don’t have a better one, so, gravel it is. Two of our grandsons, Justin and Grayson, learned how to drive Mini this summer and moved some dirt and rocks for us.

We accidentally got a sidewalk connecting our house to our shop. Well, not really accidentally. Our friend, Chris, is building a house down the road and was pouring cement one day. He realized that morning that he was going to have some left-over, so Noel did this very quickly; it must be some sort of concrete-form record! We now have a sidewalk.

One of the most special days since we have lived here was the day I saw green! I attempted a plant here and there several times, but they were always driven over, not watered, swallowed by weeds, etc. We had mud, clay, sand, dirt, gravel. I guess if you count fast-growing weeds, we did have green. Finally, the time was almost here. SOD! I can’t begin to tell you how many rocks we took out of that front yard. They say building a house is hard on a marriage. We really haven’t seen that at all. Until. . . I think the front yard is plenty free of rocks. . . we are done! We are ready for sod. And HE once again brings out that big ole’ tiller on the back of the tractor, digs my beautiful dirt up, and we pick up another tractor bucket of rocks. And that happens again and again and again. And in between those “agains”, it rains and brings up more rocks. April showers do not bring May flowers. They bring ROCKS. Lots of ROCKS. And yes, I do see the humor of once it is all done, we brought in a truckload of rocks to build my rock garden in the middle of the yard! If you are local and need some sod, we have a definite recommendation – we were so pleased. If you need someone to lay the sod, we have 5 amazing guys – 6 if you count Noel, which you should – and although I highly recommend them, they were our special team and we aren’t sharing them. =) Two of our neighbors, 2 of our pastors, and one of our teens from church helped Noel; we had another pastor coming but these 6 were so fast, that he didn’t have time to even get here before they had it done. I am so thankful for the wonderful neighbors God has given us and the servant-leaders who lead our church, and a teen who gave his time so willingly! For days, I literally sat and watched my grass grow! I am still in awe of it. And the large rocks you see in those pictures – they are all from our yard. Many of them were under-ground, but others were just laying around; I think they are beautiful. I have a happy heart every time I am coming home and come around that curve and see my beautiful front yard.

I have enjoyed playing in my garden this summer. I have a long ways to go I know, but I have green grass and flowers, and I am happy and planning for next summer. The plan is to collect enough seeds that I can start all my own plants and not have to purchase anything.

We have been blessed, and we are well-aware of that. Our desire is to use this house and this land for God’s glory, whatever that looks like. We live quite the distance from our church, but we have had quite a lot of company, and we are so thankful for that. We hope to be good neighbors who help make us a little community out here in the middle of nowhere. I’m thankful for the skills that God has given Noel and that he is willing to use those skills to help others. I’m thankful that those skills aren’t just selfishly used to make a house or make money – although I like those things. But he has also used those skills to help neighbors. He recently made signage for the classrooms at our church, and I, without bias of course, think they look wonderful.

Our next update will be exciting. I could show you here, but I wanted to spend some time just thinking about God’s nature around us and how fortunate we are that we can enjoy it on a daily basis. Those trees that have been cut down both on our land and on friends’ land are getting put to good use. Our wood floor which had some finishing issues is now amazing, but I’ll save that for later since I’ve rattled on and on. But please, come visit us! Local friends, just come out and sit on our back deck and let’s catch up. Our friends from farther away, we might have bedroom doors soon – come!