Doing Stewardship by the Right Road

by Dan Masterton

I feel like many of us, at some point, have found solace in the Thomas Merton prayer about striving to do God’s will. To take one of his key points in shorthand, Merton asserts that (1) even if he’s following God’s will, it doesn’t mean he actually is and (2) either way, a faithful effort to do God’s will still pleases God.

Lately, this mindset reawakened in me as another spring has invited me back outside into the yard of my family home. As I bandy about different ideas for the bit of the earth that we steward, I feel a little torn. I have plenty of zeal and, a tribute to my kids’ love of playing outside, a good amount of time. On the other hand, I have almost zero pre-existing know-how – all I have is the four years of trial and error as a homeowner and a dependence on bread crumb trails of social media posts, tags on plants and seeds, and catching just the right tip from just the right person.

So, see if you catch my vibes here as Earth Day prompted me to recollect some of the stuff I’e been trying lately…

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I have a mail-order subscription with a regenerative agriculture company that ships us the ground beef we use for cooking. In the last shipment, they included a “milkweed mix” seed pack. They hope customers will join their efforts on their land to restore this plant, help the monarch butterfly population, and improve pollination.

I was all too happy to turn up some dirt in our vacant deck planter and get these seeds planted, which my trusty assistant, Cecilia, took charge of happily – a little ditch for planting, a cover-up and sprinkling, and some sun and watering steadily can help them grow!

But it turns out, they may have needed to be cold-stratified? Or maybe the temps in our region and the still-cold ground will take care of that? Not sure. We’ll see. Even if they don’t grow, we can move the planter’s contents to the ground and give them another winter to see again. For now, we wait…

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Ceci took a break from
backyard trike-riding
to come finish the mulch!

I wanted to plant a tree. Well, I wanted to avoid adding too many material things to my Christmas list. And I also wanted a tree to plant. So I asked for a tree. And my family got me a tree!

It’s really cute and tiny for now, like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. And it’s supposed to be a really good one for carbon capture and climate considerations.

But now that’s in the ground, the suspense is on. Will it grow well? Will it struggle? Did I plant it right? (I swear I read the instructions exactly.) Are we watering it enough? Are we not watering it enough? Is time, like hope, actually an illusion? We’ll see!

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And my coup de gras for this spring, I decided to step up our native plants game. I’ve done milk-jug planting for two years now, and our little native seeds have gotten nice winter jumpstarts in there! The next puzzle to solve is the low part of our yard where water pools badly after rains, to the point where the grass doesn’t grow and the ground muds out.

This year, I decided to throw down a few bucks – I ordered a pre-arranged rain garden of 32 little impeccably shipped 3-inch-potted-plants, and I followed their awesome chart to plant the garden. It’s meant to catch the rain through awesome root systems, help more with pollinators, and keep the water within our neighborhood to recharge our grounds. It was fun to dig and plant and tag and prep.

Prairie Nursery includes
an awesome two-sided guide,
laminated for the work-station,
to spacing your garden
and tracking size and bloom timing.

But then as soon as I finished, I’m looking more closely… Did I sink the plants far enough? They said full sun is needed, and even a slightly shady 6-hours-a-day spot should work – is this good enough? Should I go get fancier mulch types they talked about, even though they said dried lawn clippings work fine? Was it worth breaking my no-mow April to mulch this new garden? Are the neighborhood critters gonna destroy this? Can I find natural repellents that will keep these flowers living and growing but not hurt the animals that I’m trying to repel? Agh…

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On the whole, I feel good. I feel glad. I feel like I’m doing something with our little part-acre that is good for the earth, for the animals, for the climate. It comes from a place of practicality as well as a place of spirituality.

Yet I still have these creeping doubts. Is it a waste of money? Am I making tons of mistakes? Am I getting any better at caring for this land?

So what I come back to is this Merton maxim: I think my faithful effort to do something good is good in and of itself, and somehow pleasing to God. So I’ll try to seek and take feedback and guidance in stride, with good nature, and take my lumps when little stewardship projects go awry. Because, I hope and think and believe that, at the root of all this, is a very practical and spiritual desire to do God’s will by stewarding God’s Creation. And I know God will ultimately lead me down that right road.