Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Share the Shine Project, Passing it Forward!

    This story today is even more long and circular than usual, 
so please bear with me. 
xoxoxo

***Background***

   When my girls were little we had lots of driving-to-school rituals, one of them resulting in the name of my little textiles effort, Green Goose, a story I’ll tell some other day, and another having to do with Christian radio. The three of us listened to K-Love a lot, simmering in the upbeat songs and fun lyrics just like so many other people. It makes for a positive morning!

   One of our favorite songs was called Shine by the Newsboys. We would crank it up, sing along, laugh about at the silly parts with Eskimos and origami, and share the energy. Lots of laughter. Lots of smiles and air kisses. Although the three of us don’t drive around together much these days and when we do we’re catching up furiously, racing our conversations against the clock instead of singing along to the radio,  Shine remains one of my all time favorite songs. This probably has a lot to do with the loving memories with my girls, but the song is just plain good.
   Give it a listen if you have exactly 3:44. Here’s an i-Tunes link. And here are the super fun and motivating lyrics. Funny thing, we used to sing the word ketchup somewhere in there, and now I don’t see it anywhere. Huh. Also, I never noticed “Oprah” before. Whatevv.



   My Sweet Chickens on the way to school in 2006
They shine in every way. 
If you know them, you know what I’m talking about.
xoxoxo

***Recent History***

   Okay, there’s a bigger reason I’m telling you about this. The word shine is special to me, and recently it stood out in a cool way. A few weeks ago I was browsing a sewing blog that has blossomed into a seriously soul nourishing blog called Lil Blue Boo. The owner and writer, Ashley, is a beautiful young woman battling cancer and sharing her story with the biggest dose of joy you can imagine. She chooses joy! I am seriously inspired by her, as are a lot of people. Well, she recently gained a new sponsor in the form of another  beautiful young woman also named Ashley, and her site is called The Shine Project.

   I am not exaggerating to tell you that upon browsing Ashley’s Shine site I felt that same rib rattling joy I used to feel when singing with my girls on the way to school. Yes, it could be the word coincidence, but only in part. She drums up a craving to move beyond “enough” and really be vibrant. To really, truly, shine, every single day. No matter your circumstances, no matter your resources, no matter your fears. Just gather up all you’ve got, smile from deep inside, and shine. She encourages and motivates people to serve others.

   She also sells simple charmed necklaces and tee shirts to raise money for college scholarships for kids in her area (Phoenix, AZ), but the encouragement to Shine is about all parts of life, and I love it. 

   I ordered a necklace and have been checking in on her writing here and there, and today I get to be part of launching a new project. 
***On Shining & Passing It Forward***

(Please check out the Spread the Shine site for complete details.)


   Starting this week, a large quantity 
of pre-printed cards 
will be circulating the globe.
They look like this:


SHINECARDback(1)new.jpg


They’re kinda like little “pass it forward” Olympic torches 
than belong either to no one at all or to all of us at once, 
depending on how you like to look at things.


Each card has its own identification number, 
correlating to a special site Ashley has designed.


As the cards move about the world, 
one personal transaction at a time, 
spreading good will and small, 
random acts of kindness, 
the unique stories attached to them 
will be gradually documented on the site.


That is, if everyone takes the time to participate, 
and why wouldn’t you?


Talk about a community building affair!
So if one of these cards happens your way,
please join the effort.
It does not have to be expensive.
It just has to be selfless.


   Okay, that’s my long winded celebration today. I’m pretty excited about this, and I am really looking forward to receiving my card in the mail so I can start its circulation in our little corner of paradise. (I already know who’s getting it first!) Remember, you don’t need a pre-printed card to be randomly or intentionally kind. And your life does not have to be perfect in order for you to shine, today.

   Take a deep breath, gaze at all the blessings in your life, and embrace joy fully! Love and joy are powerful antidotes to pain, I really believe that. And we all have so much to share with others. Let’s get to it.
Be radiant, be happy, pass it forward!
xoxoxo


40 Days Till Easter

   Springtime is high season for me. This is when everything greens up and things start to bloom. This is when the house is cleanest and my mind freshest. My birthday rolls around. And Easter approaches. I love Easter even more than Christmas, for a million reasons. Do you?
   Easter is when promises are kept. Easter is the fulfillment of hope and the answer to hard wrought prayers. It is a wonderful time for healing and forgiveness. It is the time of every single year of life that we can celebrate the light that follows darkness. Without fail, and independent of anything we do, springtime warms us up and gets our hearts thumping again. And Easter is the culmination of all the waiting, all the spiritual dormancy, all the deadness.
   This year I want to be ready. In yet another bizarre way, God is whispering to my heart a hidden meaning behind our childlessness… that I should be redeeming my time more wisely, not just filling it up. Not just comforting myself or wishing the weeks away. The hours that might otherwise be spent on coloring eggs and shopping for frothy Easter dresses can be spent studying the Word and preparing my heart for miracles.
“God is eagerly waiting for the chance 
to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, 
just as He always has. 
But He can’t do it if you don’t pray, 
and He can’t do it if you don’t dream. 
In short, He can’t do it if you don’t believe.”
~ Jeffrey R. Holland 

   I am not sure I agree with Mr. Holland’s word choice here, saying that there’s anything God can’t do, but I certainly agree and believe that the Lord wants a relationship with each of us, privately and permanently and apart from worldly tethers, and so we need to seek Him. That’s our part. Praying, dreaming, hoping, trusting, believing in His goodness above all else, far beyond pain. And in doing so we are assured that He will be there with strong, capable, powerful, merciful, loving open arms.
   And by the way, YES. God has already answered so many big, incredible prayers for us! Why would I ever stop believing in Him? So many dreams are already fulfilled, I get chills to reflect on where we are in life, on how much love already surrounds us. These yet unanswered longings, these fears which remain, are only scabbed over by my own limitations. He has the power to heal all of it, to work miracles I cannot even imagine! Same goes for you and your heart, whatever it is that you’re hoping for or against, He already knows.
   As late winter stretches and yawns herself into the dawn of another springtime, the life giving tremors of Easter are very real to me. Regret over wasted time and spiritual deadness is finally evaporating under the warmth of hope. The busy-keeping activity of recent months, trying to work away pain and over and over again struggling to make sense of things in my own weak ways, is being replaced with a craving for spiritual activity, seeking what He wants me to seek and discovering His power again.
“Let the past sleep, but let it sleep 
on the bosom of Christ, and go out into 
the irresistible future with Him.”
~Oswald Chambers from My Utmost for His Highest
   Lest we get too awfully serious this morning, below is a photo of Tomato the rooster. You know, spring chickens and all. He was only a few weeks old when this photo was taken, and my nephew Zane (well, Zane is *sort of* my nephew, and I love him so much) named him not knowing this feathery creature’s gender. I think it’s a perfect name. You may notice that Tomato got a bright red talon polishing that day, too, which may or may not have affected his personality in the long run. That was two years ago.   
   Nowadays Tomato runs free and wild when the sun is out. His rooster comb is a little wonky, which helps me tell him apart from the others. This is good because his full grown talons have lost their red glamour and we have several white and black roosters. Tomato can be a trouble maker, but we think he’s cool.
   However you observe Ash Wednesday, whatever your rituals are for preparing for Easter, springtime, or just another fresh new day of being alive, I wish you the very best. I wish you a long, wide view of the world, a closeness to Love,  and renewed hope for the biggest miracles you crave! Paint your talons red if it thrills you, and be happy. You are loved, and big things are waiting.
“I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”
~Psalm 34:4
xoxoxo
   

Sowing, Sewing, and So-Soing

   This past week has been light on writing but packed with happy activity. It feels like a prelude for good things to come, with the first true days of spring so near us and really so many beautiful blessings to enjoy until then. 
   I have spent some time transplanting four ridiculously early and equally thrilling tomato plants gifted to me from my incredibly funny Grandpa Rex. Those are worth talking about. For starters, one of the varieties is “Mortgage Lifter” because the man who originally grew and sold these produced enough to pay off his house! Awesome. I’ve sprouted lettuces, basil, allysum, and cosmos flowers. I’ve collected manure for friends and family and have made some progress filling my own raised beds. I have been eating fresh eggs a lot and washing them down with orange juice, all the while watching our 2012 egg count rise steadily. Last Sunday we had enough big, colorful eggs in the fridge to share a dozen each with three different families, and still our own shelves are overflowing. This is how I envision our vegetable and herb production going this year, too. Think positively with me, friends!
   Clean for approximately seven and a half hours one day this past month, on a day when I anticipated a crafty guest, my sewing room has been warmed up with activity, too. I’ve cranked out a handful of cute cottony things and have been mostly successful in not starting too many new projects before finishing others. That is a challenge. Sketching and combining fabrics is easy; pushing all the way to the hemming and thread knotting is the mark of industry. Like, seriously. Especially on these blessedly cold, rainy days we’ve been enjoying.
   Speaking of rain, what a gift! There’s just no underestimating how good this is. More on that tomorrow.
   This week, thanks to a brief escape with Handsome, I was lucky to have several extra hours set aside just for reading, and read I did. Thanks to my casual education from reading, if all goes as planned and imagined, this year will bring us healthier diets, a more localized take on food ecnomony, and stronger ties to our community via small production farming. This three day weekend, I am starting bean sprouts and homemade cheese and bread.
   As for the so-soing, well, all of these worthwhile jobs, hobbies, and seasonal goings-on have pushed me to the edge of my fitness wagon if not completely off of it. It’s partly a matter of inertia, just settling for quick energy at the end of an extremely busy day, but the not working out is a time management mistake. So hopefully I have caught myself before slipping too far backwards. 
   Right now Handsome and I are luxuriating in one of the sweetest, happiest Saturdays in recent memory. The perfect mix of productivity, rest, and affection. Tonight we have plans to watch an OKC Barons hockey game with two other couples, so I’m hoping for big ice fights!! I don’t know what the rest of our long weekend holds yet, but it is a welcome pause in a heavy month. Next week and the week after will be at least as busy as the last two, packed with business travel and an overloaded office schedule, house guests, book club, horse training, snow pea and carrot planting, and a bloggers’ conference, so we’re really carpe-ing our diem.
   I am so thankful for my husband, for our life together, for his job and his success there. I am so thankful for my children, for their health and beauty and love. Even if they aren’t here in this house right now, I feel them and hope desperately that they feel me. I am so thankful for our parents, our friends, our community. This might be the loveliest life a woman has ever lived.
“My actions are my only true belongings.”
I stole that from a fellow Oklahoma blogger,
her name is Lisa, and she was quoting Thich Nhat Hanh.
He’s a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.
XOXOXO  


Launching Our Own Food Miracles

   So, this new book I’m gobbling up has me thinking a lot about the locality, seasonal freshness and nutrition, and carbon footprint of the food we eat here at the Lazy W. 

   Before I go any further, let me state firmly that we Lazies are unlikely to undergo any kind of food revolution or take up any new environmental banner worth flying. I mean, not exactly. All I’m trying to do is raise our global agricultural and economic awareness a few notches and improve the health of our bodies and our soil as we go. Noble enough for this house. Plus, there’s the small matter of pursuing a private edible Eden like this one…

Pinned Image
   This morning I took my notebook into the kitchen and made a quick inventory of everything we had stocked between the freezer, refrigerator, pantry, and fruit bowls. I also tried to write down as many of the things we buy throughout the year that happen to not be around right now. This list was staggering. We are just two people, you guys, and the volume and variety of foods we keep near us seems gluttonous when viewed as a whole. I mean, really. Beyond that, I was more than a little shocked to see how much processed junk still lingers within our walls even after so many attempts to clean up our diet. But the point of this exercise is not chastisement and guilt trips but rather growth and improvement, so onward we go!
   The next step of the exercise inspired by Barbara Kingsolver was to examine which of our food stuffs is or could be produced more or less locally. I skipped the “is” question because deep in the recesses of my cheap skate shopping mind I already knew the answer. Let’s just say that I gravitate toward off brand labels. Lots of bright yellow boxes in my pantry, folks, and I am not really ashamed of that. 
   
   But the “could be produced locally” question was exciting. This was yet another time when being a native Oklahoman filled me with pride and gratitude. My home state is rich with agricultural bounty, so even those items which I myself have not grown or produced, I felt sure I could find them (or most of them) in some way nearby. 
   I sat down with a cup of hot coffee and, trying to ignore the guinea fowl chirping noisily at the window, began marking which of the 115 items* on my list could be moved from the shopping list to the production plan. It was as much fun as circling items in the seed catalog! 
*Note: Many of the 115 items I listed are just categories of things we buy. 
So many product variations exist in our processed food culture 
that I found it counterproductive to list every single thing.
This in itself could serve as a wake up call 
to how much money and energy we waste
in pursuit of flavor or convenience or both.

   Okay. My specific personal lists and plans may be of little interest to you this early in the morning, but I will say that the list of 115 store bought items was easily whittled down to 51. I found 64 edible items that could be produced here at this hobby farm or sourced right here in Oklahoma! Still more that remains on the list of 51 could be eliminated for the sake of efficiency, but that’s a task for another day.
   I definitely encourage you to try this  exercise yourself. It is fascinating to realize how many wonderful edibles can be grown, produced, or culled right from your own back yard! Search out other local producers with whom you might do some old fashioned bartering. Visit your farmers’ markets when they’re in season. Find a local orchard. Examine the meat markets. 
   These are all steps we can take toward healthier diets, more stable growing environments, and economies that are ever so slightly less dependent on fossil fuels. Plus, the pleasure of growing your own food is a known stress reducer, and gardens are proven value boosters for homeowners.
   
   Wow, I have no trouble at all finding a soapbox in the morning! Sheesh.
   In Zone 7 we are fast approaching the first of many planting dates, friends, so these are the scheming weeks. This is when we still have time to decide to fully maximize our dirt patches and become contributors rather than just consumers. This is when we drive to our local horse-chicken-and-buffalo-keepers and relieve them of a bucket or two of manure for our compost. (hint-hint)
  Urbanhomestead.org 
    We have snow on the ground as I write this morning. It is perfectly beautiful, and it is providing some much needed moisture to the pastures. But it also means I won’t be scooping manure or filling raised beds today, which is where my heart kind of sits. Perhaps this will allow some extra time to catch up on other worthy pursuits. All good things are seasonal, after all. 
Have a great day, you guys!
Whatever Your Passion, Dream Big!
xoxoxo

My Garden’s Pseudo Manifesto?

   I had already devoted myself to a more serious gardening effort this year, a deeper, more consistent approach to growing something as close to organic as possible, when I laid my dirty, badly manicured hands on this little book.
   Do you know that feeling when something big and meaningful suddenly clicks with a personal yearning you’ve felt for a while, largely unable to articulate it until that unpredictable moment? This happened to me today. My craving for seasonal, from-the-ground-up, healthy life and garden reconstruction has found a voice in Barbara Kingsolver’s 2007 book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Or at least, this books speaks for a large part of my heart. 
   Earlier today while waiting for a cup of coffee to brew so I could warm up before heading back to the cold chores waiting for me outside, I picked up this book expecting to just skim a few lines. It had come highly recommended, after all, so I nabbed it at a book store recently but then just let it sit around in a pile of good intentions. Working with compost and animals all day had me more in the mood for garden talk and less in the mood for politicians (I have been reading Game Change, that 2008 election story), though, so I branched out. I ended up plowing through the first chapter without breaking a sweat, and with every page my agri-excitement built.
   Kingsolver was an accomplished novelist by the time she wrote this book, a non-fiction account of her family’s year-long experiment to become true localvores. So I sank happily into her style of expression which is mercifully free of pretension but rife with poetry. It’s just a lovely first chapter. Kingsolver makes a strong case for examining our food sources. She inspires fresh thinking about the nature of culture of any kind, in particular North American food culture or lack thereof. I am now even more fascinated  by the notions of environmental overdraft, the illusion of topsoil, food provenance, and being an agricultural agnostic. (Say whaa???)
   “Live each season as it passes; 
breathe the air, drink the drink, 
taste the fruit, and resign yourself 
to the influence of each.”
~Henry David Thoreau

   This has been a favorite quote of mine for a long time, but I usually groove toward it when the weather turns cold, reminding myself to notice the leaves’ color change, enjoy the fireplace, etc. But in terms of growing food and working more in cooperation with our environment than in competition with it (demanding for the sake of our mammoth appetites that we beat the elements into submission), Thoreau quickly reminds me to watch what grows here and when. Pretty simple.
   
   “Isn’t ignorance of our food sources
causing problems as diverse as
over-dependence on petroleum,
and an epidemic of diet-related diseases?”
~Barbara Kingsolver

   This isn’t meant as a book review tonight. I barely read two chapters today anyway. But I do feel more than a little bit magical for having thrust myself into this family’s story just as the Lazy W gardens begin to finish their winter dreaming. As I finish up my waning moon chores and wait for seeds and seedlings to arrive, I will be reading alongside the Kingsolver family’s monthly gardening tales and hope you guys don’t mind me sharing the comparisons.
   
This is really beautiful in every way.
I might need to have this framed in my kitchen, seriously.
   I was not exaggerating to call this stuff a meaningful yearning. Beyond the fun of gardening, beyond the superiority of organic produce, even beyond the arguable benefits to our global health by growing and eating locally, there is intrinsic joy to be found in this “hobby,” although I think that word is terribly weak. One last quote, then bedtime:
“Food is the rare moral arena 
in which the ethical choice
is generally the one more likely 
to make you groan with pleasure.
Why resist that?”
~Barbara Kingsolver

Why resist it, indeed?
xoxoxo