Lazy W Marie

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

friday 5 at the farm: early summer joys

Friday already? Yes, it’s Friday! Wow. We just accomplished another full-to-bursting work week and are sliding fast and furious toward the weekend. I couldn’t be happier. Actually, Handsome and I were just reflecting on how these past couple of weeks have been particularly satisfying. Filled with all sorts of boxes checked, obstacles demolished, attitudes refreshed. Prayers answered, too, let’s not forget that. We sure can’t take all the credit for being in a place of peace and contentment. Thankfully, the goodness around us far exceeds what we are capable of drumming up ourselves.

Real quick, how about a Friday 5 at the Farm?

Here are some things bringing me total and utter joy this week.

#1: Baby chicks are growing! Mama Hen and her little flock of six are happy and energetic. We love them.

#2: Some foot TLC, including new stretches and a topical anti-inflammatory. After a break that felt much longer than 3 days, I finally logged 8.2 glorious, humid miles between Thursday evening and Friday morning and am super grateful to be back at it.

#3: Homegrown salads! Every big bowl is layered with a variety of lettuces and greens, raw veggies, and farm fresh eggs. I could live on this meal. Actually, I kind of do.

#4: This overflowing trough garden and our new flat deck make me happy every single day. In the early morning hours, the light is lavender and pink and the birdsong is orchestral. By midday the dragonflies are buzzing low and I crave my best lawn chair and a good book for soaking up the sun in privacy. Early evening brings cooler temperatures and lacy shadows from those oak trees. And if we are lucky enough to step outside at night, we are rewarded with velvet black, diamond-crusted skies and lots of frog song. At any hour, I love to brush my hand across the globe basil planted here and bring the fragrance with me. Even my husband notices.

#5: An evening at Vacation Bible School with our Jedi OKC friends! Man that was fun. So many happy kids and so many stellar people making good things happen for them.

 

And with that, we are off to the next chapter. What daily gifts have brought you loads of utter and complete joy this week?

Carpe those diems, friends, they are rare and beautiful.

“I promise if you keep searching for everything
rare and beautiful in this world,
eventually you will become it.”
~T.K. White
XOXOXOXO

 

 

looking around to improve your perspective

Yesterday afternoon I stumbled into the weirdest funky mood. It lasted maybe 90 seconds and had the effect of a low, dark cloud crawling meanly across an otherwise brilliant sky. It was so distinct and forceful that it literally stopped me in my tracks. I was walking downhill toward the vegetable garden and paused, looked around like maybe I heard something behind me? Klaus stopped too and crooked his head to wait for my next step. His face and the green lawn and a few other beautiful things reminded me that I was home. That the moment was good and the context was magical. 

I’m grateful for awareness when my perspective is shifted negatively and for the power to bring it back to center. It’s often just a small exercise of noticing physical beauty, then maybe indulging in the quiet, inner messages some of them bring:

Fallen tree branches that resemble antlers. I cannot resist collecting them and inserting them into every flower pot, and it gets me thinking of the hundreds of patterns in nature, in the universal patterns of the human experience, from one generation to the next.

A stout gray and white horse who loves to scratch the hollow of his chin against every T-post on the farm. Oh Dusty, I love you.

That weird but pleasant summertime fragrance combination of latex paint, sweet clover, and manure, all warmed by the sun and stirred by the breeze. It’s just nice.

Watching our German Shepherd (I can no longer in good conscience call him a puppy) and our llama play together like little boys. Remembering the girls when they were little and prone to indulging in “Mud Monster” afternoons. Dreaming of their futures. Watching the dog and llama again, best friends on the muddy edge of the pond. 

The pond is still so high! Exceeding its banks, our own small lake, all these weeks after the heavy rain. Grace is abundant. We are fattened by it.

Walking around the bee hives, seeing the Honeymakers float and parade near their respective porches. Each colony is so unique, and all three of them are so entrancing. This is an endless metaphor.

Raking up great, thick, heavy clods of crabgrass, recently tilled, and shaking loose the dirt. Looking up just enough to visualize the food that will soon be growing here.

Checking for the day’s newly laid eggs, having to gently lift each hen to find them. Feeling the warm, sticky film on eggs that stay in the nests, waiting to hatch. Learning to trust the life cycle without counting chicks too early.

The lingering smell of marigold blossoms and arugula, the rough texture of kale, the jewel toned petunias and geraniums near the kitchen door. Oh man I had the best Grandpa…xoxo

Neatly pruned trees that had once been a chaotic black jack grove. Peace and strength that have brought some order to a fearful heart. Order and more beauty.

Frozen things are long thawed, mountains are moving, fear is losing once again to Love.

“Most people think it takes a long time to change. It doesn’t. Change is immediate! Instantaneous! It may take a long time to decide to change…but change happens in a heartbeat!”
~Andy Andrews in The Noticer
XOXOXOXO

lazy w honey maker update

You guys, this is gonna be “the year” for beekeeping at the W. I feel it. I feel it in my belly and my bones, and the stinging ladies whisper it to me every time I walk downhill. They dance in the sunshine and crawl between the clover blooms and beat their wings in a furious but happy Morse code message that says, “We like it here. We will stay. And if you get your hobby farming act together we will even make you some honey.”

I think that’s what they’re saying, anyway.

They’re probably Italian bees, and I barely remember my Spanish lessons from high school.

Let me introduce you to our three royal majesties who are each overseeing a completely unique colony, each acquired in a very different way too:

At the far left, nearest the pond, we have Princess Grace. She and her bees are building up their population at an incredible rate since last Spring, when my friend and fellow beekeeper Terry brought that swarm to the Lazy W. With Grace we enjoy gentleness, calm, and elegance, plus important lessons about leaving too much space in the hives, lest industry takes over and the bees one day explode with burr comb. Ahem.

Princess Grace, from a captured swarm… xoxo

Near the center of the middle field is Queen Shakira: So named because she and her ginormous family literally never stop dancing. Ever. And she can be a little spicy, but oh how beautiful! How dangerous and mesmerizing! I want to draw your attention to Shakira’s upper box, painted as a tribute to the 1980’s. Here we have Mr. T as well as a “Bee Box” instead of a beat box. Ha! Get it? There’s even more on the unseen sides. I have my talented and hilarious husband to thank for this treasure.

This was a “package” of bees I purchased at the 2016 spring conference, delivered from the vendor a couple of months later while I was visiting Jocelyn in Colorado. In my absence, my friend and mentor Maribeth and our (now mutual) friend Amber cared for this small group of stingers until I returned home. Handsome took charge of assembling and painting the wooden ware, and by the way he is the best hive artist ever.

Since then, month by month, Shakira and her fuzzy humming clan have grown like gangbusters. They have more than filled up the first deep box, overflowing out of it really, to the point that I recently added that second box you see. The concern was that the bees were so overcrowded they might swarm out on a warm spring day. I waited until winter weather had passed (specifically, until we had 24+ hours of temps above 55 degrees) then supplied them with new frames sprayed down with sugar-water (to encourage them to draw out the comb) and am continuing to feed them heavy syrup infused with drops of “Honey Bee Healthy” for their guts and immune systems. So far so good! They are still here, and they are voracious.

So, Shakira now has an upper story and deserves it. She has a bottom deep stocked with brood and honey and pollen, and I could not be happier. She and her bees seem to be draining their syrup supply faster than the other two hives. I suppose all that dancing? No pests yet, hallelujah.

Queen Shakira on the left (a purchased bee package one year old) and Queen Anne of the Damned with her Las Diablas on the right (cut out colony from this spring). That is my running trail in the back ground.

Nearest the Pine Forest you see the new home of Queen Anne of the Damned, matriarch to all of her Las Diablas: This queen got her cool name because the kids in charge of naming her originally suggested “El Diablo,” the translation and literary connection for which was too good to resist. Shout out to our fellow Anne Rice fans! Her drones, of course, shall henceforth be known as Los Diablos. Love it. Ha!

This is my brand new colony, the result of my first “cut out” supervised and assisted greatly by Maribeth. An old friend of my husband’s (my friend now too) contacted me several weeks ago reporting that while cleaning out a shed, he and his brother discovered honeybees. He asked whether I might want them then sent photos. It was an established hive, tons of gorgeous comb, not a swarm, so we were in less of a rush than we might have been.

This is me painting the shed with mouthwash, where we had removed honeycomb. It is supposed to discourage bees from returning to that spot.

I basically could not say yes!! fast enough and scrambled together a plan. About a week later (holding our breath through some risky wintry weather) Maribeth and I performed the cut out, photographed almost the entire time by our friend’s brother Eric. LOL He was super chill!

Thank you for documenting the fun, Eric!

He wore an extra bee jacket but no gloves and was right up there with us, just quietly admiring nature. I had the best afternoon! Then Maribeth and I installed the bees here at the farm, with a classic Oklahoma sunset lighting it all up. Magical. 

Since that exciting afternoon, things have gone remarkably well. Queen Anne and her Diablas have acclimated to their new surroundings, happy I am sure to still have so much of their native comb. These bees came with loads and I mean loads of capped brood, dozens of baby bees already hatching, pollen in colors ranging from pale yellow to crimson, and a little honey. Maybe enough to feed on during the dry weeks ahead of nectar flow.

I am so very thankful to our friends for thinking of us and letting us wait a week to fetch the bees safely! Eric and Erin’s mom Lynn gets first dibs on Anne’s honey harvest!

The only hurdle I have so far noticed for Queen Anne is that Meh the llama, or possibly my horse Chanta, has been happy to knock the lid off in search of that sweet syrup. Which is so dumb! Because often we have looked outside to see one or more of the three bachelors running away and rodeo kicking in objection to (most likely) a sting.  They were doing this to both Anne and Shakira.

Dumb, the narrator said darkly, shaking her head.

Anyway. A few strips of duct tape and two ratchet straps later, the problem seems to be solved. I am just so thankful that at each disruption, the bees were nonplussed. 

Maribeth answers my questions tirelessly and offers complicated but useful guidance every time something changes. I love and appreciate her so much for this. Beekeeping is nuanced, and my learning curve has been a roller coaster for sure. I also love that she makes a point to ask about my Papa Neiberding often. I also also like that my bees tend to sting her a lot more than they sting me. That’s funny. I’m sorry but it is. 

Okay, that’s it for now! I could talk about this cool stuff all day, but I don’t really know what you guys think of beekeeping, or how much you want to read about it, ha! So if you have any questions feel free to send em!

“Plumbers get wet
and beekeepers get stung.”
~Maribeth Snapp
XOXOXOXO

 

friday 5 at the farm: snapshots of life lately

What a week! Starting with last Sunday, which was refreshing and restful in many ways, this past week ran the gamut. We experienced so many highs and lows, worked so hard, and loved so intently that as I type this early Friday evening I’m feeling kind of amazed. Amazed that we made it unscathed. Amazed by how surrounded we are by goodness and how perfect God’s timing is. Amazed that springtime has finally won the tug of war with winter. There’s a metaphor in all of that, I’m sure.

It’s Friday, so how about five snapshots of life lately?

Monday around lunchtime Jocelyn texted me, asking was I busy? Never too busy to see her. I cleaned myself up and drove to the City. We spent several hours talking, shopping, and drinking these drinks you see below. She is a boba tea devotee, something which I feel only “Kids These Days” really understand, and I enjoyed a viciously strong iced coffee with a not skimpy amount of real cream. Monday happened to be her last day in Oklahoma for a while, so we soaked each other up. (I didn’t even cry!) She brought a friend to the farm that evening for dinner, and all four of us laughed so hard and so much that a big grin was plastered on my face the rest of the night.

Sidenote: Handsome had just endured a ridiculously difficult day at the office, so a night of good food, hard laughter, and face to face time with our Girl was the perfect antidote. xoxo

f5 coffee C

I mentioned that Spring has sprung. The best evidence of this is how sheddy the horses are. A few weeks ago I could brush the loose hair off of their ample bodies, but now a light breeze cause great drifts of it to float away, and by the end of March we will once again look like the tribbles from Star Trek have invaded.

f5 chanta C

Our evening meals all week long have been to die for. Handsome and I both feel so much better when we eat “well,” which means some thing slightly different for each of us. After many consecutive but worthwhile days of feasting with family around the time of Grandpa’s funeral and then celebrating my birthday, both of us were happy to settle back into a more deliberate eating routine. Our bellies just needed a little break. My faves, as always, are big bowls of leafy greens topped with roasted or raw veggies (currently obsessed with radishes and cucumbers) and whatever protein we have available. In this photo I also topped my giant salad with one sweet potato, cooked to perfection in the air fryer. Love that gadget. Zero oil needed.

f5 food C

Don’t you love how once the landscape wakes up, even shrubs and trees that had been more or less green all winter, suddenly look vibrantly green? Check out this unruly beast behind my metal rooster. Those tendrils grew several inches this past week, as they will continue to do all the way up until about Thanksgiving. And the color! Like someone turned on a light bulb inside the branches. I love it.

f5 rooster C

Sewing! I have spent a couple of days in the Apartment this week getting reacquainted with my sewing machines. That’s been fun. Watch for a big Mother’s Day event soon!

f5 apron C

We have been aggressively thinning our decorative and collectible hoard, which feels wonderful. Every day I continue work on manure/compost and take a long walk to see what is growing (nearly everything). We’re so happy the hens are laying again, and with enthusiasm. And of course so many interesting beekeeping jobs. The Lazy W Honey-makers are doing so great, I have a lot to tell you soon.

Ok, that’s it for now! We are off to relax for the night and are excited for a hiking and car show event with friends tomorrow. Then more running, eating, romancing, farm working, and keeping the stress demons at bay.

Wishing you the best weekend ever!

“Misguided urgency can be the enemy of progress.”
~The Minimalists Podcast
XOXOXOXO

 

will I ever blog again & it’s fine

Stuff is crazy, man. Life is full to bursting, in the coolest and scariest ways, and by that I mean only the very best, most nourishing and fulfilling ways. Trust and gratitude, gratitude and trust. It’ll all be fine.

Day after day I have ideas of things that need writing. Most days I sketch them in the nearest spiral notebook and sometimes jam out a few sentences on Facebook, but the full depth and breadth and height of life will never be captured this way.

klaus kale shirt happy C

Even when I want to sit and spend the sunrise hours writing, it’s really time to feed the animals, play fetch with Klaus, drink my last cup of quite strong perfect coffee, make the beds (ours is a two-bedroom marriage now, it’s cool like being bi-coastal but together), start some laundry, scoop some manure into the compost, and BAM it’s finally time to lace up and run some miles. Preferably before my stomach starts growling obscenely and I cave and eat breakfast first. Fasted miles are my favorite.

Also, am I losing weight? Getting speedier? Slimming down or not? Do people care, should I blog about that journey? I don’t know.

It’s fine.

This morning I ran at the farm. Our sandy hills are doing their very best to dry out from all the glorious early spring rain, but they are still quite slick and mushy. Lost in thought, about halfway through mile three, my toe caught a slick tree root and somehow I fell up in the air instead of straight down to the ground. My mind commanded to my body, “Go limp! Go limp!” and my body obeyed. Not only did I go limp; I managed, at the apex of this weird tumble, to twist myself so that in a slow-motion moment I landed on my cush posterior, facing the sky. I just laid there looking at the pulsing blue, relaxed because I luckily had the presence of mind, mid-twist, to hit pause on my Garmin. Pace records are suddenly very important to me. Apparently as important as not crashing my porcelain teeth on a slab of red rock. Or this steel pipe gate pictured below. Anyway it was a very Matrix-James Bond moment for me, and the only damage was some damp red earth scuffing my clean white compression socks. My posterior is unharmed, as are my porcelain front teeth, etcetera.

forest gate C

Then midday, my friend Amber visited the farm for the first time, and we had the best real conversation. In less than an hour we dove deep and swam easily through topics like sex education for young women, honesty and transparency in the coming of age, marriage and how men apologize differently than women, motherhood, the importance of treasuring the exact chapter you’re in, how beautiful mundanity can be, smoking meats, and much more. I met Amber through beekeeping and learned that she practically lives around the corner from our farm, which happens so rarely I get quite excited when it does. I have the most wonderful feeling that she and I will be spending more happy time together this spring and summer.

My dog is in love with her. Awkwardly, I am afraid.

With what remains of today I plan to finish a small pile of ironing, sew one apron, and get a pork tenderloin started for a late supper. Then the chicken coop gets a serious cleaning and fresh supply of nesting straw and the middle field gets as many scrapes from my manure shovel as time will allow. More friends are visiting this afternoon, and I am pretty happy about that.

klaus cuddle sky C

The thing is, really, it’s fine. All those thoughts that swirl and pester us, the What-If needles, all the things that keep our hearts frothed up, they are under control. Let’s go ahead and relax. Enjoy the day whether it’s busy or mundane. Love your people. Say your prayers. Trust God with the stuff you cannot (and should not) control.

Blogging again soon, maybe. After Klaus is done snuggling my feet.

It’s better than fine. It’s perfect.
XOXOXOXO