Supernatural Research Society of Iowa

SRSOI has been looking for a way to get involved in the community, and we think we’ve found it!

When the City of Des Moines put out a request for volunteers to help tend to cemetery grounds, Vicki grabbed the opportunity and signed the Scoobies up!

We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day to break ground on our “Adopt-a-plot” project at Woodland Cemetery. The sun was out and we enjoyed warm breezes as we raked and clipped our way to a successful Earth Day.

Vicki, John, Kevin and I took on a small section of headstones with peonies planted next to them. As we were cutting back last year’s plant growth, and raking out all the leaves that covered up the pink baby plants, the little peonies seemed take a deep breath to say, “Thank you, thank you! Now we can breathe and see the light!”

As we worked and chatted in the sun, we noticed a whirlwind building up in the next section over. A wind funnel had sucked up a ton of dead leaves and was whipping them around in the form of a HUGE cyclone! As we watched the twister spin the leaves, it headed toward us… and toward our piles of the leaves we worked so hard to rake!!

As the 40-foot high tornado crept toward our work site, Kevin cast out his hand. “Be gone! By the power vested in me, I cast you out!” With his outstretched hand, he directed the twister around our site, and it seemed to obey!

Unfortunately, he accidentally sent the cyclone straight into the path of the parked cars. With doors open and windows down, dozens of leafy flakes made themselves at home in Kevin’s car and the back seat of Vicki’s Mystery Machine. But hey, At least our leaf piles were spared!! =)

Twister aside, the SRSOI Scoobies had a productive afternoon and managed to rake and clip NINE yard bags worth of debris from our adopted plot! We can’t wait to go back and take care of “our” section again, and watch those baby peonies grow up into big, puffy, ant-loving flowers. Because like Vicki says, “If we don’t take care of the dead, who will?”