Lazy W Marie

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

Raised Beds From Reclaimed Wood

   A blogging friend and I are thinking alike quite a bit these days. Heather posted this weekend about making the most of your kitchen’s leftover contents and coming up with fun, new recipes following a decadent, costly, and probably calorie-heavy holiday season. First of all, her recipe for yogurt banana bread looks as delicious as it seems to be healthy! 
   Secondly, I like her approach. So much. She suggests that we make the most of what we have. Take honest inventory of your resources and make the most of that stuff, right now.

“Do what you can,
with what you have,
where you are.”
~Theodore Roosevelt

  These words convey to me such a sense of calm and resourcefulness, such encouraging satisfaction! Do they to you too? In a culture where consumption is key and having is often more important than doing, it’s easy to get caught up in the various races we all know about. Today, let me echo Heather’s mantra and offer you some additional encouragement to make the most of what you have.
   But not in the kitchen, in the garden. My favorite room in the house.
   Handsome and I spent a good part of the long weekend building garden structures. We built three raised vegetable beds and one fantastic arbor over the center aisle, all from reclaimed materials! I’m not even kidding. Seriously, with the exception of going to Home Depot (where spending temptation knows no bounds) to buy one replacement blade for his reciprocating saw and a box of long screws, we made zero purchases for these major farm improvements. 
   This kind of thing gives me happy chills, you guys. We used old stockade fencing peeled from the rubble of the kids’ playhouse “fort” in the back field. It had been thrashed by the violent May 10 tornado almost two years ago, but I have not had the heart to let go of any of it. This doesn’t count as letting go; this is re-purposing and keeping near all over again.
   We used limbs and trunks from already-fallen trees in the nearby Pine forest. We even plucked rusty nails out of old planks of porch wood and used those again, both the planks and the rusty nails. After an hour or two of collecting raw materials for free, I stood back and was fairly stunned by how much we had at our disposal.
    The sight was definitely motivating! We built and built and schemed and sort of measured and worked together like a well oiled machine, not stopping for lunch until the whole thing was done.
   What’s fun about accomplishments like this, beyond the monetary savings, even beyond the intrinsic pleasure of having been resourceful citizens of the planet (she says as she snaps her suspenders), is that our new projects have been braided together with happy old memories.
   For the next several years, hopefully, I will be gardening within these lovingly constructed boxes. These boxes built from rough, painted wood that instantly brings to mind the sound of my children laughing and the smell of sunshine in their hair.
 I will be coaxing flowering vines up heavily barked tree trunks that remind me of the first walks my husband and I took together on this property, four and a half short but historic years ago.
My adorable, deeply loved nephew and my two precious, beautiful daughters.
This was taken in the spring of 2008, almost four years ago. 
I see the mud on their clothes and those easy smiles
and remember how much fun we all had, how much love flowed freely.
I hope they remember too.
  
   Okay, off we all go to the next great thing in life. Have a wonderful rest of the day or night, friends! Take a good look around and challenge yourself to make something new and beautiful out of what you already have, right now. Because you are blessed!

And please say a prayer for my girls and their cousin.
xoxoxo

Seed Catalog Fantasies

   This is the month for gardening catalogs. No doubt about it, every year January’s slow rhythm and cold climate join forces to draw me into colorful, papery daydreams about how my flower beds and vegetable gardens will look in the coming months. If I am a willing slave to  list making and reVolutions, then I am a love struck teenager when it comes time to dream up the new year’s lushness. 
That is a heckuva lots of carrots, you guys.
Do not forget to thin them once they sprout to about an inch of green fluff.
This makes all the difference in the world.
My Grandpa has always grown it, and I agree it performs really well in Oklahoma.
   Between farm chores, ironing Handsome’s work shirts, sort of doing P90x, cooking meals that are NOT chicken-lime-cilantro-tortilla soup, and reading for our fabulous little book club, I have been salivating over the myriad possibilities held teasingly in the pages of two truly gorgeous catalogs: Burpee and Gurney’s. Click on those links just to browse, but also do yourself a favor and request their free catalogs. 
Some like minded soul somewhere in the world painted this. 
It made it to the internet without a source. 
And now sits on my lowly Pinterest page, 
inspiring and reminding me to dream big green dreams.. 
Three cheers for Audrey Hepburn.
As well as for the neat and tidy, anonymous artist 
who loves gray paint as much as I do.
   This year we’ll be tackling some major improvement projects around the Lazy W. And just so no one thinks I am throwing around the Victorian “we” too loosely, it is true. I am one of the lucky women whose husband is happy to do some heavy lifting in the garden. In fact, he freaks out a little if I do certain jobs myself. Another way I am spoiled, I know.XOXO
   We’ll be building raised beds in the largest (and also enclosed) garden plot which is on the west side of our house, sort of the way to the pond and back field. Within those raised beds we’re installing plastic and/or cardboard weed block, infilling with layer upon layer of horse and buffalo manure, chicken litter which includes  shredded paper, hay, dirt, chopped leaves, you name it. This lasagna process has already begun, thankfully, several weeks ahead of our first seed sowing. Between those raised beds I hope to grow something short and fragrant but also mow-able. We’ll see how THAT pans out. Any brilliant ideas?
   The bald spots in the east facing flower bed are gradually diminishing, each season since we’ve lived here bringing with it more “kept” plantings and bigger, prettier shrubs and perennials. But there aren’t NO bald spots yet, so flowers will be planted. Big flowers this year. Really big ones.
Can you see the sparse garden over there? It’s the east facing one.
This is how we first saw the house back in September 2007.
Let me just say that the previous owners had been renovating the home’s interior
 and had great ideas for the garden but ran out of time to implement them 
before being relocated by the military.
***************
Since 2007 we have replaced the roof with a really pretty dark charcoal shingle,
following a vicious hail storm which was followed by an equally vicious tornado.
We have replaced the front door and picture window 
because of a pretty devastating house fire,
and moved back then replaced that chain-link fence with three wire.
Also, that is not our horse, but she was a sweetie.
This is more or less how the flower bed looks now, 
when viewed standing at the front door. 
I think this photo is from November 2011.
   I am only planning to dig two new beds in 2012, and they are both small ones, and I have already started amending the soil to make the job easier. One is the space near the chicken coop, where a few things like butterfly bush, cedar, and Rose of Sharon have gone wild. The other is a curvy spot right outside my kitchen window, which this year will be my very own potagerie. A place to grow heat-loving herbs like basil, oregano, and mint. As well as those little food stuffs that a cook needs quickly while preparing meals. Cherry tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, hot peppers, etc. Smaller crops that require less real estate but more attention.
   Thanks for listening to me ramble about farm improvements and for joining my little garden fantasy. We’re approaching the end of January soon, so the time to stop dreaming and start working in earnest is upon us. I’d love to hear what your garden plans are for 2012!
Slow Food is the Best Food
xoxoxo

5 Senses Tour, Contemplative Tuesday in January

   Since its earliest hours, today has felt serious and more quiet than normal. I am wonderfully free from external pressure and hurry, unlike my husband who is at the salt mines again. I feel like we’re on the brink of something special, but something quiet maybe, and I don’t want to miss it. The easiest observation to make is that the animals are cuddling each other a bit more, wrapping up in closeness and affection against the chilly air that swept in overnight. Also, the gardens are turning inward, funneling all of their energy streams toward cold, dry roots and springtime fantasies. Today is a good day to take inventory, to reflect, and to nourish from the inside out.
What I See: Indoor plants newly fertilized and outdoor garden plots gone dormant, sitting expectantly like blank canvases or empty lined pages. Grassy, manure-covered rectangles teasing me for new designs this year and promising bigger, lusher harvests if I get around to building those raised beds.
“The violets  the mountains have broken the rocks.” ~Tennessee Williams
What I’m Reading: Three books this week, though the first one more than the others because it’s the subject of our Book Club dinner, which is this Saturday! 
    Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson. This is a page turner! Proper book review coming soon.
  Game Change, a behind-the-scenes account of the 2008 Presidential elections. Reads like a fiction, thoroughly enjoyable. 
   True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp I’ve mentioned this one before, too long ago, and it is still unfinished because I didn’t read enough during the busy holidays. Review of this luscious book forthcoming too.

What I Hear: Very little apart from the gentle, sleepy murmurings of the animals. The guineas are free range now, all but four, and their songs pepper the farm from sun to sun.
What I Feel, What I’m Touching:  Lots of manure. My goal is to have the farm spotless by the end of the month or earlier and to have the gardens all spread with the rich, crumbly stuff well ahead of the spring rains.
This is a pile of chicken litter removed from our coop. 
See all the cool white shreddy stuff?
May I suggest if you have access to shredded paper, 
whether you use it as animal bedding or not, 
consider using it in your compost heap.
It retains moisture beautifully, lightens up our Oklahoma clay,
and keeps one more thing out of the landfills.

What I Smell: Cinnamon Scentsy, laundry soap, and my husband’s pillow while I write.


What I Taste: Orange juice, heavily buttered English muffin, and fried eggs.

   I can’t be sure exactly what’s on the horizon, friends, but I feel goodness all around us. I feel a surge of hope, an oceanic depth of love, and greater calm about our storms than I have felt in years. Happy Tuesday. Let me know if you see whatever it is I’m waiting on.

Feel Every Detail Today
xoxoxo
5 senses tour

Slow, Beautiful Decay

   I luxuriated with some time in the flower bed today and noticed even further advancement into dormancy. The changes happen so gradually, yet so suddenly, that it is easy not to see every colorful, textural stage of the season.

   After the abundant sunshine, the first thing that is apparent is how many leaves have fallen and how much of the crunchy stuff has accumulated in the corners of the farm, mostly against the buildings and fences.
   Then there are the brilliant colors. Brick red, true gold, bronze, mustard yellow, crimson, and brown, every shade of brown. Nearly every leaf has surrendered its green now. Only a few waxy stems remain here and there, but they were probably frozen that color and will soon be kneeling to winter’s authority.

   The second chance tomatoes are stubbornly offering up their remaining fruits, but those fruits are blistered and burnt now from our cold nights. I am having a hard time pulling up these dead lovelies, after all they’ve endured this year. It seems overly brutal of me to insist they have reached their end. Maybe if I leave them all winter we’ll enjoy reseeded babies next Easter. Those are always stronger, by the way, in case you didn’t know.

   I watered everything today while the sun was warm and the soil receptive. We have a few more cold nights forecasted, and Mom & Grandpa have always said that you should water deeply right before a freeze. The idea is that the water will soak down and freeze around the root systems, forming protective insulation against the harsher freezes soon to come. Then in the springtime, of course, the buried ice melts at a snail’s pace, giving each plant that deep, slow kiss it needs right as it’s waking up…

   Cannas are as striking in dormancy as they are at the height of a tropical summer., I love the structure of their big leaves, the fuzzy seed pods, and the rusty colors. I never cut them down until new growth emerges in the late spring. Often winter does it for me, though, and the fodder makes excellent mulch.

   Speaking of pruning, I also delay cutting anything healthy off of the rose bushes until maybe February. Borrowed garden wisdom says to let the sap slip all the way out of the branches before cutting, which takes the entire winter. So unless you see something truly diseased or so badly tangled with another branch that it needs to be removed, let it stay for now. Make like McCartney and Let it Be.

   The pansies I planted earlier this autumn have all doubled in size. And they are so fragrant. Of course you have to be pretty near the earth to smell them, but what a treat! Don’t you love the fragrance of wet earth mixed with that peppery, sweet smell of petals? So nice and clean. Better than Scentsy even.

   The mums all seem ready to trade their first round of blooms for another, but I am not ready to snip anybody’s head off quite yet. I adore the colors of straw and burlap all around me.

 Delay, delay, delay…have I found reasons to delay, or am I delaying for good reasons? I think the former is truest. Any way I can keep from busying myself right now allows for more wandering, more touching, more dreaming, especially in the garden where God does His quietest work and where I find the most miracles.
Enjoy the changes around you…
xoxoxo
   

5 Sense Tour, Potageries

   The past few months I have been preparing a little plot of earth near our south facing dining room door to become a Potagerie, a small kitchen garden for growing herbs, edible flowers, and small daily use fruits and veggies. A lot of planning and work will go into it before anything this beautiful happens at the Lazy W, but good things are underway. Here are five of my favorite inspiration photos to get the organic juices flowing.
The connection between dirt and counter top is so vital, 
and I love everything about this photo.
This pretty little corner is just part of one hundred acres of gardening
at a museum in Massachusetts.
Different hardiness zone, I know, but close enough to inspire and teach.
Pinned Image
This curvy, well stocked little garden 
brought to us by This Hopeless Romantic.
Perfect.
Pinned Image
This photo was originally on a site called “Bliss and Kiss” but I cannot find it now. 
I have always loved growing blue morning glory vines over a doorway. 
They impart such a grandness and coziness at the same time. 
Pinned Image
The variety of height and depth makes this garden really interesting, 
and using grapevine obelisks for climbing foods is just beautiful.
   I am linking up a day late with Monica on her Five Sense Tour, collecting all kinds of wonderful eye candy along the way. Have an inspired, imaginative day everyone!
xoxoxo
5 senses tour