Lazy W Marie

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

friday 5 at the farm: joy of gardening lately

Hey hey it’s Friday!! Another work week in the books, another special weekend chomping at the bit. In case I don’t get a proper Father’s Day post up by Sunday, if you are a dad to anyone on the face of this earth or beyond, please accept my love and hugs. The world needs more excellent fathers, just like you. xoxo Happy Father’s Day weekend!

While I actually have mounds of gardening news and information to share (The Members’ Tour! The front field progress! Lessons learned!) today I just need to celebrate. Since it’s Friday, maybe just a quick list of five ways gardening has been extra joyful for me lately:

  1. Members’ Tour: GAH you guys. To say that I was inspired is such an understatement. The ideas and affection that flowed from that day could fill a library. To say that I was honored, yes for sure. I still can’t believe I was invited into this gorgeous circle. But humbled. Oh man was it a humbling experience. I cried bitter tears afterwards but am all better now. Whew! Can’t wait to have a few hours to sit and write.TOUR me handsemo with sign
  2. Maddie’s Learning Curve & Friendship. As you know, most of my Thursdays since January have been spent with my new partner in crime Maddie, exploring the mysteries and wonders of plant science. Well, also plant silliness. We have so much fun. I am blown away by the progress she has made in her own front yard herbs-and-veggies paradise, and I am so thankful just to know her as a person. She and her Mom (our dear friend Mer) helped us out during the garden tour last week, and Maddie made me SO PROUD.TOUR me maddie gate supastah
  3. Bartering Services! Fellow Oklahoma blogger Cassie from True Agape recently posted an offer to trade her technical expertise (personal coaching, social media help, or blogging advice) for some garden design work, and I jumped on it. Though she and her family live in Tulsa, she was keen to work out a trade via technology communication, and it has been great fun. This is the first time I have done such a thing for someone I don’t really “know” personally, although she and I have worked together before on a few blog projects. Do you remember me writing about how non-running spouses can support their beloved runners? That was for Cassie’s blog! And I promoted her children’s book and marriage advice e-book too. Usually friends might trade a garden idea here and there, but to have a sketch of her flower bed and measurements, to be set loose with the invitation to “create some curb appeal?” GAH, so cool. I thoroughly totally completely loved it. It took lots of self control to not ask if I could impose myself to help do the digging and planting, haha. By the way, I asked for Cassie’s help in making this electronic space look nicer and work better for readers, and that invitation doubles for you. If you have any suggestions for the Lazy W blog please send them my way! I am once again in face-lift mode. 
  4. Flowers: Do you remember me saying a few months ago that I really wanted to increase our flower supply here at the farm? Well, wish granted. Or actually… Work rewarded. Although it was not much work. My gardens are casual but blooming profusely, and I am so happy. Most years the edibles far outweigh ornamentals, but not this year. It’s been refreshing to walk through so much color.zinnias
  5. Jocelyn is growing her own tomatoes, herbs, and even cacti, all from seed!! I clearly saved the best news for last. xoxo Do you know what’s extra funny about this? The fact that she planted her treasures in containers that can be moved indoors to evade the elk and bears, haha! This is not a problem known to Oklahoma gardeners. Do you know what’s extra sweet about this? The fact that she is excited for the smells. When she told me this my heart skipped a beat. 

Thanks as always for stopping here. Please check in soon for Members’ Tour posts and much more! The honeybees have some stories to tell, also.

What has been extra joyful in your world this week?

“Gratitude is the fairest blossom
which springs from the soul.”
~Henry Ward Beecher
XOXOXOXO

48 hour countdown to members tour

As I sit here typing and drinking lots of very strong, delicious coffee, it is Tuesday morning.  Not the discount home store but a mark on the calendar. On Thursday morning, just 48 hours from now, we will open the farm to almost 90 local Master Gardeners. The Lazy W was invited to participate in this year’s members’ tour, the theme being countryside homes and eclectic or offbeat styles. **PERFECT** right? So I am pretty excited. Quite. I love gardening and I love having people here. The morning will pass quickly with two separate tour buses loaded with about 44 people each, and I am having fun deciding what refreshments to serve.

Handsome and I try to keep things spiffy around here just for our own pleasure, and to entertain friends and family, but welcoming accomplished gardeners with cameras means that we are kicking it up a notch or two. We will be pretty busy between now and Thursday morning, getting beds cleaned and weeds pulled. Trees trimmed and lawns watered. Etcetera, etcetera. Maybe one or two extra flower pots?

flower bed work may 2016
My husband snapped this photo of me in early May. You would not believe how much this flower bed has exploded with color and foliage since then! All our rain and easy temps in Oklahoma have been wonderful.

Please send your good, happy vibes! Send your spare energy and mental high fives, too. We love them all.

I’ll be posting updates on Instagram and Snapchat, so feel free to join the conversations there. I would love that. Until next time, happy gardening!

 

“Won’t you come into my garden?
I would like my roses to see you.”
~Richard Sheridan 
18th century Irish playwright
XOXOXOXO

the legend of how the iris survived a famine in japan

Have you heard the legend of how the elegant iris survived a famine in Japan?

I am going to paraphrase it for you without bothering to fact check, because the best legends possess more magic than facts, anyway. xoxo

Once upon a time in feudal Japan, either a century or five or nine ago, the people were starving. The land was stricken hard by famine. So little was growing, and yet the population was exploding so greatly, that the government made a decree: In order to maximize their limited farmland it was ordered that only edible plants could be cultivated. The island nation could afford to waste no fertile soil on ornamentals like flowers.

But the Japanese people loved their flowers, their irises especially. Irises were heritage plants, like they are for us now: Legacies handed down from one generation to the next with great care. Beautiful, fragrant, voluptuous tissue blooms growing year after year in the toughest conditions. The villagers could look at their irises and glimpse decades and centuries of familial connection, a vital life force in their culture. To many villagers, growing irises seemed as important as growing food.

So they found a way.

The people gently unearthed their coveted rhizomes from garden spaces that would then be dedicated to growing food exclusively. They secreted the woody treasures up to the thatched roofs of their homes. In little pockets of earth out of view of the soldiers and farm overseers, they maintained their iris legacies.

Food grew below, in the open, and the famine eventually passed. The land healed. And irises grew above, in secret, and their legacies remained in tact. The people healed.

irises april 2016

As I sit here typing this story a very old cut-glass vase faces me, filled with yellow and white iris blooms. I brought them inside yesterday, and they have been perfuming the downstairs ever since. Like most people, I grow irises that were gifts. Some are from my Mom who got them three decades ago from my Dad’s grandmother, whose parents brought them over from Germany. Some are from my wonderful gardening friend Kevin. A few are wild transplants, but not many. All of them are gorgeous and strong. Resilient. Colorful in different ways but all heady with that unmistakable scent.

Plants come and go in our lives and in our culture for a variety of reasons. Lots of people are quick to dismiss a loss or even to claim “brown thumb” when growing conditions are tough, as they frequently are here in my home state. Okay, gardening isn’t for everyone. But beauty takes many shapes and can come and go in our lives for a variety of reasons. The next time you are faced with losing something beautiful and precious that perhaps you could salvage, take heart. Consider the faith and determination of the Japanese people when they were faced with losing something dear to them. The evaluated their resources, re-purposed everything, and found a way. They made a way. They valued beauty as much as sustenance and then quietly, without fanfare or violence or a noisy protest, fulfilled the desires of their own hearts. And it was plenty enough.

This story speaks to me on many other levels too. If you were here drinking coffee with me we could talk it over for a few hours! But we both have stuff to do, right? I’ll leave you to it and get on my way as well.

Seek beauty, friends. It is a meaningful gift. Live with beauty. Aim for legacy. Seek it. Value it. Make room for all of it in your life, even if you have to secret things away to your thatched roof for a season. It can heal you.

Happy springtime wishes from Oklahoma
XOXOXO

 

 

 

where will you spend this early spring?

We sat in bed yesterday morning slurping our first cups of perfect coffee, braiding together our legs, and fighting off the bouncy and space-invading affection of our 95-pound puppy. Slowly I recalled the overnight thunderstorm (it was glorious!) and hoped that during chores at daybreak I would still be able to smell ozone and see damp flower beds and pastures. Handsome clicked on the morning news, and there he was. Puxatony Phil. The prognosticator of prognosticators. The groundhog of all groundhogs, hoisted up in all his fatness, ready to tell us what kind of weather to expect next.

Low and behold, as by now you surely know, Phil did not see his shadow and we are all set for an early spring. Or are we? No matter what Phil’s prediction, the news anchors are always quick to dismiss the folklore, citing that Groundhog Day is rarely accurate. So let’s compare Phil’s 2016 declaration to what the trusty almanac says. The farmers’ almanac, after all, is correct more than 80% of the time, and the science behind its construction each year is kind of mind-blowing. Here is what I see for our area over the next two months:

FEBRUARY 2016: temperature 50.5° (2° below avg. north, 3° above south); precipitation 1.5″ (avg. north, 1″ below south); Feb 1-3: Sunny, cool; Feb 4-10: Showers, then sunny, warm; Feb 11-13: Showers, warm; Feb 14-17: Rain to snow north; sunny, mild south; Feb 18-22: Showers; cool north, warm south; Feb 23-29: Snow north, rain south, then sunny, cool.

MARCH 2016: temperature 60° (1° below avg. north, 3° above south); precipitation 2″ (2″ below avg. north, 1″ above south); Mar 1-10: Sunny; cool, then warm; Mar 11-13: Rain, then sunny, cool; Mar 14-21: Sunny; cool, then warm north; warm south;Mar 22-24: Sunny; Mar 25-31: Sunny north, rainy south; cool.

That looks like an early spring to me, friends!! And if a chilly morning surprises us here and there, remember what Hemingway said…

even a false spring

 

Start surveying your life for the happiest places to spend springtime, okay? It’s so close.

See you soon.

“When spring came, even a false spring,
There were no problems except where to be happiest.”
~Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast
XOXOXOXO

 

 

gardening semester begins

Friends, I am so excited to announce the beginning of a brand new adventure here at the farm. I have the opportunity to do some very casual teaching, and because I am the luckiest girl alive, it’s a whole semester about gardening!! Probably the only everyday conversation I enjoy more than running, ha!

Our dear friends Brad & Meredith have trusted me with their teenaged daughter Maddie to learn as much as possible about plant sciences, and already she and I feel like a semester is just not enough. For a few weeks now we have been brainstorming, plotting, and planning all kinds of stuff. From edibles to herbs and wild, Tim-Burton-style flower gardens, ideas abound. (Maddie is a proficient make-up artist and loves the deep colors and high drama of this aesthetic. Think… Alice in Wonderland, translated to the Oklahoma landscape!)

daylilies gardening class sticker

 

Our current plan is to meet every Thursday for at least nine weeks, and in that time we have a long list of learning to accomplish plus quite a wish-list of projects to tackle.

Already in the first two Thursdays Maddie and I have dug up a soil sample from her prospective flower garden and delivered it for chemical evaluation at the County Extension office; we met her sweet gardening grandma for lunch and talked all about irises and much more then visited the Crystal Bridge in downtown OKC; and at home she has been tending a pot of mesclun seedlings (which she named David Bowie since they germinated right at his passing) as well as carrots growing in plastic soda bottles. Today we plotted her compost heap and discussed, among other wonderful things, plant folklore, Rose Rosette’s Disease, and the difference between annuals and perennials. It’s been a solid beginning, if perhaps slow compared to how busy we will be once the growing really starts.

maddie garden first 2 weeks

On a personal level, it’s been eye-opening to answer gardening questions here and there… Things that makes me pause to make sure I really know the answer and am not just guessing, and moments when I want to be encouraging of her ideas but also realistic. Sometimes we harbor little pockets of knowledge that feel automatic or are maybe difficult to articulate, you know? And you know how strongly I feel about positive thinking and belief. I would hate to dampen her enthusiasm on anything this early. The thing is, Oklahoma has her fair share of challenges. Maddie’s main gardening focus will be a curved flower bed on the south side of her family’s brick home, so she is about to find out how brutal Oklahoma growing can be, haha! Send her happy thoughts. : )

On an even deeper personal level, starting this little teaching adventure has been bittersweet because my own girls’ homeschooling has been so far removed from me. That’s a painful topic, but I can hardly overlook it. Sometimes life is circular in ways we could never predict.

Jeremiah 29: "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, ad not of evil, to give you an expected end."

I will periodically share our learning-teaching-gardening adventure here and hope you’ll follow along. Maddie might even do a little writing of her own to share with you fine folks, beginning with a short story imitating Native American plant folklore. She really got hooked by that today. Thanks ahead of time for your encouragement and positive vibes!

In every gardener there is a child who believes in The Seed Fairy.
~Robert Brault
(and this is exactly where my throat tightens up so hard I can barely breathe.)
XOXOXOXO