Lazy W Marie

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

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Archives for 2014

XXIV sonnet

A little poetic pause to accompany another beautiful Oklahoma sunset.
Love wraps us, warms us, and reminds us it is all grace.

sunset blue

 

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,

And let us hear no sound of human strife

After the click of the shutting. Life to life –

I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,

And feel as safe as guarded by a charm

Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife

Are weak to injure. Very whitley still

The lilies of our lives may reassure

Their blossoms from their roots, accessible

Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer,

Growing straight, out of man’s reach, on the hill,

God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

~24th sonnet from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Thanks for visiting, friends! Hope to see you again later this week. Make it a really great one.
XOXOXOXO

stuck

It happens to the best of us. We get stuck.

And it’s inconvenient and maybe embarrassing. And possibly painful.

We get stuck in difficult situations. Dilemmas that test us. Spotlights that terrify us.

We get stuck in traffic, stuck in debt, stuck in toxic relationships.

So frustrating, right?

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A few days ago our tomcat Geoffrey got himself stuck in the layered wire ceiling/roof of the chicken coop yard.

geoffrey stuck 1

geoffrey stuck 2

Poor Geoffrey. It’s not uncommon for him to spend all night in the coop with the chickens and geese, as he is a great nighttime hunter but not at all interested in the flock. In fact, he’s probably in more danger from them than they are from him. Often we release the birds at sunrise only to find him bolting out at high speed, ears flattened and eyes wide, having been hiding in some corner, probably either from Johnny Cash the violent gander or Randall the Redneck Rooster. But this morning was the first time we’d found him in quite such a predicament. Stuck. So stuck. Handsome had to loose our fluffy boy from his wiry womb and sooth his frazzled little feline nerves. Happily, Geoffrey was uninjured. Just embarrassed and a little stressed.

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When you’re stuck, how do you cope?

You can rail violently against your circumstances, throwing little fits and pouting,

at your leisure expounding on all the injustice thwarting your obviously good and noble efforts.

(You can spin your wheels, basically, which is the first natural thing we all tend to do.)

 

Or you can calm down, be very still in mind and body, and take a deep, cleansing breath.

 

sunset blue

 

You can focus on what is going right, what is going really well in fact, and cultivate again that seed of gratitude.

You can let the anxiety fall quietly away and gather instead all the positive energy available to you.

Consciously remember that you have vast resources within you and around you,

resources that can change your circumstances in amazing ways.

Reach out in prayer. Faithful prayer. Harness your imagination.

Then start to work.

Do the first simple task in front of you. Do it really well.

Then do another thing.

And another.

And keep moving.

Be so filled with momentum and living energy that old anxieties and worries cannot distract you.

Just keep choosing to see the Light and continue working.

Trust that you are being helped in unseen, supernatural  ways, because you absolutely are.

*************

Geoffrey is fine now, by the way. He shook off that stuck stress quickly and was in a minute dreaming up his next big tomcat adventure. My heart tells me he was thankful for Handsome’s intervention. But it also tells me that deep down Geoffrey knew help would eventually come.

Interrupt anxiety with gratitude.
Do your part.
Trust.
XOXOXO

oklahoma garden resources

Hello! It’s early Tuesday morning, which means I am getting ready for another fun day at OSU-OKC for Master Gardeners’ class!

Seriously? I have so many things to share with you about these sessions. The people are just fantastic. The new energy flow is welcome in my life and so interesting, stimulating. The deluge of information being offered is unprecedented! And so much inspiration… Week after week, I come home with new ideas and smarter daydreams. I just had no idea how much further my mind could be stretched in an arena I have loved for so long.

Maybe the most important thing I am learning is how to find really good information. And that is something I’d love to share with you no matter where you live, but especially if you too are digging and sowing and harvesting in this Great State I call home.

 

Oklahoma garden resources lazyw

Because anyone who has tried establishing and tending a garden in Oklahoma knows it is particularly challenging, right? Extreme everything. Ferocious wind, crazy temperature fluctuations, either droughts or floods (or both!)… Every soil type under the sun. Very little goes the small, quiet way here. Including beauty. So we need good support. Smart, experienced people to light the way. Here are some clickable garden resources for you, as offered to me by the fine folks at the Oklahoma County Extension:

 

Oklahoma Master Gardener Program

Soil Test 123

Oklahoma Proven

Association of Natural Biocontrol Producers

Hydro Hippy (pollinators for sale)

OK State Entomology & Plant Pathology

National Academy of Sciences pollinator resource

BBC programmes: The Private Life of Plants

Don’t Move Firewood

Bio-Integral Resource Center (for Integrated Pest Management)

IPM Institute of North America

Albuquerque Extension Master Gardener Program

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service

Ohio State University college of food, agriculture, & environmental science

I will be adding to this list periodically, so please check in again! And if you have an online resource to share, please send me a note and I’ll add it. Knowledge is power.

We know we belong to the laaaaaand!
XOXOXOXO

friday 5 at the farm: random photos

Happy Friday!! We made it to another weekend, friends. The farm has certainly been hoppin’ lately. Our oldest daughter Jocelyn has been spending more time here, warming up the place and pouring her music into every room. We spend some of our time at home, just breathing deeply and moving slowly, and some of it driving all over creation getting stuff done. I love every minute. So thankful.

We’ve got more seasonal autumn spice happening day by day. And the gardens are enjoying a lot less brutality from Mother Nature, although the chickens have tried to pick up the slack where the weather has left off, scratching and pecking lots of gorgeous plants almost to death. Dang chickens. But I do have new gardening gloves, so that’s nice.

Things are overall great! My husband is working too hard at the office, but it’s because he cares so much and has such high standards. And that will never change until I write a book or otherwise hit the jackpot and he can retire.

How about a quick Friday 5 at the Farm, just some random photos and captions? Okay.

 

f5f nieces

Last weekend my parents and little brother Phil and our sister Angela’s three gorgeous kiddos visited the farm for some autumn fun. Our oldest daughter also surprised us with a visit and brought a friend. I didn’t even know she was coming! She just walked in the front door saying “hellloooo!!!” Such a crazy fun surprise when your kids are old enough to do that. I love it. And my nephew’s friend Matthew came, too. We’ve watched those two boys grow up together and love them very much. The place was full of happy people. We ate soup my Mom brought (delicious) and snacked on chocolate-chip pumpkin bread (also yum) and tried pretending like it was autumn weather while really we were sweating under the shade trees. But painting pumpkins and building scarecrows helped a little. It was a wonderful day. I love my family so much.

f5f frogs

Our daughter was able to spend the night after all the family fun, and late in the evening after cleaning and resting and just as we were about to go to bed, I offhandedly mentioned that the tree frogs had recently had babies. She LOVES animals. I mean, LOVES ’em, even more than I do. Especially babies. Especially any difficult to love variety, like frogs. So of course her eyes lit up like diamonds and of course I relented and we took a clean bucket outside and went hunting for frogs. So, that was perfectly terrifying.

f5f calzone

One evening this week we had homemade calzones for dinner, and I promise to post the recipe soon.  All it is, really, is pizza dough with your fave fillings, folded over, brushed with egg wash, and baked. The best part of this story is that after she watched me make one batch of Alfredo sauce Jocelyn asked me to teach her, and with very little guidance she made a second batch perfectly. She’s a natural! In fact she’s been cooking here a lot lately, and it gives me so much peace and happiness knowing she can do this for herself as a young adult. In my opinion, cooking well and regularly is more than a novelty.

f5f seeds

As if the wealth of knowledge I am gaining at master gardener class isn’t enough, nearly every week someone brings live plants to share. And also, we have lately been collecting dried seeds from the campus gardens to bring home and fill our own little Edens. So exciting! Now when I walk past my herb bed or shrubby border, or when I see any garden for that matter, I ask myself What can be saved and propagated? And as for my growing knowledge base, right now I know just enough to be really dangerous.

f5f bat

Thursday midday as my girl and I were walking through downtown Oklahoma City, we happened to see this fuzzy little guy. It’s a bat. I know! A real live bat in the middle of downtown OKC, not Austin TX, and in broad daylight! Warming himself, it seems, on the concrete step. There was much begging and cajoling for me to bring it home to live at the farm (we already have lots of bats here, but this assurance meant nothing to the girl who wanted to “save” this one), and there might have even been a dare for me to touch it. Our crouching, squealing, photo-snapping spectacle drew the attention of a few passersby, and surely by now the Legend of the Downtown OKC Bat is thriving, at least locally. I’d like to add now that late last night I couldn’t sleep and watched a NOVA program about the current Ebola crisis. Apparently, bats are strong and common carriers, so… That is almost as terrifying as tree frogs suddenly having lots and lots of tiny babies.

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How has your week been? Give me a headline or a funny story from your corner of paradise. Or tell me your favorite meal this week. Better yet, assure me that looking closely at and maybe touching only the fur of a bat will not give me Ebola.

Happy Weekend friends!
XOXOXOXO

another midnight rendezvous & hope satisfied

She had already spent at least an hour with him at the end of the day, getting her jeans nice and dirty, snuggling and brushing and leading him. Riding him with barely any tack despite his boundary-pushing mood. She played with her horse happily, part woman and part little girl, while in the tree-rimmed valley my beloved Oklahoma sunset gave us a kaleidoscope show of reds, oranges, golds, and streaky, dramatic blues.

Once or twice the two of them stood motionless and stared into the forest for a long time, probably listening to deer and resting. But I imagined them staring into the future, wordlessly communicating like they do. I imagined her forming her beautiful new life right there with her thoughts. Strong and capable, graceful, dangerous, beautiful.

joc sunset dusty

Several hours later, after dinner was cleaned up and we had made a second batch of oatmeal lace cookies (try them with Nutella, friends) and after all three of us had watched a scary movie (it is the month of Halloween, after all), I stepped outside to inhale the stunning moonlight and say thanks for such an incredible day. She followed me and we stood on the warm concrete sidewalk together and just enjoyed the cool breeze. It was a particularly gorgeous night, cool and breathy, no violent wind. Everything was illuminated silver under the night sky. The geese were even mostly quiet. After a moment she giggled and said she was going to scare Dusty (her horse). She was wearing running shorts now, no longer the afternoon’s jeans, and she was barefoot. She scampered around me and down the sidewalk to reach the front gate of his pasture. I was the one to follow this time and called after her with a warning of stickers, but, you know, she’s okay Mom.

She passed through the gate and tiptoed downhill in the glowing wash of moonlight, navigating wildflowers and nocturnal cats. There was a moment when a bug surprised her and she did a fancy little dance and wiggle to free herself, and we both giggled endlessly. Then she called Dusty’s name in a stage whisper but didn’t find him yet. Continued in wide circles and gentle, searching steps under the silver sky. Big dark pools of tree shadow all around her.

Then she let out that trademark whistle she and Handsome have always used, that two-syllable song that starts low and ends high and never fails to catch or calm a horse. That got him, as she had to know it would. But he was uphill from her, behind her near the barn instead of down where she was looking. When she turned her womanly body to see him her pretty face lit up like a little girl and she ran fast on bare tip toes. Caution abandoned. He half-trotted down to see her, and they hugged. She wrapped her arms around his thick neck and he bent that thick neck across her back. There was much baby-talking and deep whinnying. So much mutual affection.

I just stood there soaking it up, amazed once again at how generously God answers prayer. And how suddenly. Amazed by how much sensation and emotion can be packaged into one moment.

Of course she could not resist another midnight ride. And given his obstinacy earlier that evening, she probably felt it her duty to tame him a bit. So for the second time in a week, right there under the brilliant moon, feet bare and heart light, she launched her tiny body up, belly first across his bare back. No reins, no help, nothing. He is so fat right now! And though he isn’t very tall she barely reached that high flat spot of his back before exploding into a fit of laughter. This triggered him to start walking toward me, and she hung there upside down (I don’t know how), all big smiles and playful kicking legs, trying to find purchase.

When she finally did gain the upright advantage, she just swung one smooth, lean leg over his rump and pivoted quickly so she was square and perfect, like that was the exact place she had always been meant to sit.

And of course it is.

He was calm for a moment, staring at me wide-eyed with those thick broomy lashes, maybe for permission or help, who knows? Then the silliness began again. They cuddled and kissed and nibbled at each other; she laid forward and wrapped herself like a baby monkey all around his ample middle; and the breeze braided together her dark hair with his black and white mane. I could barely hold back happy tears.

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Whatever you are praying for, whatever your hope, stay strong. I even think, the more hopeless a situation feels, the more important it is to continue in prayer and gratitude, in hope and seeking. Walls that keep you from seeing the blessing are sometimes weak, cruel illusions. And the walls that are very real can crumble in an instant. Make good use of your waiting season, but do not give up on any miracle. Okay? Love is terrifyingly powerful.

Here is where we’ve poured our hope
and where we’ll wait for it to grow.
~Emily Freeman
XOXOXOXO