What a beautiful Groundhog Day morning…
Handsome and I slept in just a touch,
the perfect end to a sweet, fun Saturday together.

We carried mugs of perfect coffee outside for a quick little Hot Tub Summit,
when the ground was still bare and the skies still clear, if dim and gray.

As we soaked our bones and reflected on our dose of weekend romance,
the snow flirted with us and cast a delicate snow globe spell.
That muffled silence… I just love it.

Then suddenly the winds whipped up.
It sliced through our faces, ending Hot Tub Summit pretty quickly.
We sprinted the twenty yards or so from the hot tub to the kitchen door
And changed happily into warm, comfy clothes. Nowhere to travel today.

I should mention here that Handsome volunteered to do
every bit of the animal feeding today.
This is extra luxurious for yours truly.

In just minutes the snowy flirtation progressed to a full on assault.
The farm quickly dressed herself in white, every surface rapidly accumulating
piles of broad, fluffy snowflakes.
Absolutely beautiful.

I’m not the least bit discouraged by the groundhog’s wintry prediction today.
This “six more weeks” business is no problem.
Spring will descend in her perfect time, in her gentle ways.
Until then, there are seeds to order and books to read.
There is cuddling to do and love to enjoy.

We have six more weeks to count the blessings of this past season.

Happy snowy Sunday, friends. Especially those of you here in Oklahoma with us.

The end of winter is always a thrilling time for gardeners. We gather up last year’s lessons learned and unfulfilled longings and search for ideas and ways to do better. We list then list again all the myriad foods we wish to serve our families straight from the back yard and all the herbs that we no longer want to buy at the grocery store. The appetite is great.

We also celebrate all over again last year’s experiments that were successful! The crops or bouquets that surprised even our own sweaty brows. (This is where having taken photos last year is really helpful.) We lust after fifty shades of green and intense flavors and every natural perfume this beautiful world has to offer.

I am certainly no exception. Right now on my coffee table is a wicker basket about two feet wide and half that deep, filled with brand new seed catalogs and gardening magazines. Countless sheets of paper have lists and diagrams scribbled with my ideas for 2014. I go to sleep thinking about the garden and I wake up thinking about the garden. I think about it when I run, and I talk about it every single day to anybody who will listen. Including our parrot. Everywhere I visit, I will inevitably spot a little expanse of dead lawn that could become a vegetable plot or maybe a barren ribbon of earth circling an office building that really should be a flowering border. I believe in my heart that everyone I meet wants our free Lazy W animal manure, and it baffles me when they decline.

This year some of my sweet local friends are joining the slow food movement with renewed passion. We are ordering seeds in large quantities to share the shipping costs and encourage each other,  and we are doing so twice: Once next week for the earliest spring planting then again closer to tax day for the summer stuff. Some foods and flowers we have decided to buy locally.

Are you interested? Do you have even just a sunny patio where you could start a few bowls of lettuce, or maybe a little strip of lawn that could yield even more? It does not have to be fancy or ginormous to be thoroughly satisfying in every way! I’d be so happy if you followed along with us this year.

Here are the seeds we plan to order now in order to make the most of the cool months:

• radishes (both red and white)
• lettuces (There are so many different varieties! We’re ordering fancy-schmancy lettuces you’re  not likely to buy at the grocery store.)
• kale (swoon)
• snow peas
• spinach
• carrots
• arugula
• broccoli raab
• parsley
• cilantro

And here are the foods we plan to seek out and buy locally, mostly because none of us are equipped with great grow lights or heating mats, so it makes more sense to buy flats of baby veggies rather than have them shipped:

• garlic
• potatoes
• strawberries (both the June-bearing and ever-bearing)
• broccoli
• cabbages (both colors)
• cauliflower
• brussels sprouts
• asparagus

Are you tempted? Or are you three steps ahead of me already? Either way, I wish you the grandest gardening adventure ever this year! I wish you good, nutritious, slow food that feeds your soul as well as your body.  I wish you a true spiritual connection to your little piece of this earth, however big or small it is. And I wish you all the sensual pleasures we are promised for being caretakers here.

Stay tuned for more from the Lazy W slow food movement! This is only the beginning.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

~Wendell Berry

XOXOXOXO

Happy Marathon Monday, friends! How was your weekend? Ours was pretty amazing, until late last night when a grass fire in a neighboring pasture kept Handsome outside for several hours. Thankfully he watched and kept the W safe and sound while I kept our big bed nice and warm by remaining in my chamomile-induced coma. Until that, we had enjoyed book club on Friday night, Hot Tub Summit on Saturday and Sunday mornings, lots of romance, time to play, time outside doing farmish things, new cats for the barn, just all kinds of great stuff. Sunday morning at church was even pretty wonderful. Life is good.

As for my marathon training, last week was mediocre and last night I had an anxious dream to prove it. (I dreamed that I forgot how to pace myself and while rounding a corner in midtown this guy offered me a hive of bees and then I felt conflicted by that and the fact that my favorite color was no longer green, oh nevermind… It’s hard to explain this early in the morning.) Suffice it to say that for Hal Higdon week four I was scheduled to run 23 miles and only clocked 14.5. So I am now 8.5 miles short, which is a pity because had I planned better that gap could have closed in just one day. I simply failed to make running a priority last week. Kept putting it off thinking Oh I’ll get to it. And then the sun sets before 6 pm and it’s dinner time and I have wet laundry to deal with or dirty floors and then it’s tomorrow. And the feeling of failure snowballs. Well, not this week! Today is starting with a bang, no matter how cold it is or how long my list of chores becomes.

AND I joined a running club.  A sweet friend of a sweet friend, after I bugged her a little on Facebook, graciously invited me to participate in a South OKC group which meets not too terribly far from our place. This should introduce some accountability to my routine as well as give me the safety of running with a group so I can tackle those longer miles somewhere other than  the quarter mile loop in the back field of our farm. I am really excited!

So. Getting a bit more serious with the Higdon calendar. Making progress in the gardens. Ordering seeds with my friend Seri. Reading three more books that already have my full attention. Doing some spring cleaning around here. Trying to lay down my ego and be more pliable with the men in my home. Believing in miracles and the power of hope and love. That’s what I’m up to this week. What about you?

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

~William James

XOXOXOXO

p.s. I’m posting this a full day late because yesterday turned out to be packed with excellent activity! Great start to the week indeed. And check out last night’s sunset:

Happy, productive, love-filled, healthy Tuesday, friends! Stay cozy.

   Today is my baby sister Genny’s birthday. She is the real deal, and I love her sooooo much, it hurts just a tad. Every year I get better acquainted with the young woman she has become, and so every year I fall a little more in love with her. If you know Gen, then you know what I mean. She is a number crunching, book devouring, roller derby skating, wave making, bungalow buying, friendship nurturing, world traveling force of nature. And I was there when she was born. You’re welcome, world, is what Im trying to say.

   I originally posted my version of Gen’s birth story here two years ago, and if you’ll indulge me I am rebooting it today. http://thelazyw.blogspot.com/2012/01/twenty-nine-years-ago-yesterday.html

Happy Birthday sweet girl. I would love you forever even if I didn’t have to.

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

   Debbie was already there, too. She was my parents’ good friend, someone who I loved dearly and who always ate granola with honey and who carried a purple backpack full of notebooks and dangly earrings and who went to school in places like Vermont. Vermont! She sent me postcards from college. It was a pretty big deal. She had a gorgeous mane of hair that at one time was shorn off with just a three foot braid trailing down her narrow back. She was a beautiful mystery to me.

   Deb was a midwife and a smart, loving woman, but we were still headed to the hospital. We found the travel bags that had been long-since prepared. Dad helped Mom into the back seat of our cute little white Subaru wagon. She is petite and so fit perfectly on the shallow bench seat. I was perched on Debbie’s lap in the front passenger seat. It was freezing cold, and my teeth chattered. Dad drove. Dad drove like I had never seen him drive before, nor have I since. I doubt he ever blinked once on that drive. 

   We lived only about ten minutes from Baptist hospital in Oklahoma City, and with the absence of traffic in the wee hours of the morning, it should have been a quick, uneventful trip.

   We drove north-west up the Expressway, slicing through the dark with our happy little emergency. I sat stone like on Debbie’s calm lap and did not say a word. In my mind I can remember her patchouli smell, too, and feel her long braid against my shoulder. Her lavender vinyl backpack full of treasures was at our feet. Back then I thought Debbie was a wizened creature of the universe, older than I would ever be, but in truth she was just out of high school, not yet off to college in Vermont. She was surely wise then but very young. Perspective is a funny thing.

   We all sat stiffly in our seats and trembled from the cold and the adrenaline. I remember eventually giggling with Debbie and feeling so grown up and special to be allowed this chance to welcome our new family member into the world. Seeing a sibling born is something that just cannot be duplicated.

   “Joe, it’s time! It’s really, really time!” Mom was nearly shrieking. Shrieking.

   Now remember, in Dad’s defense, there had already been a few false starts that holiday season. Hard contractions were a fact of daily life since Christmas, so much so that I was trained by then to help time them. So Dad had to think it could be another false alarm. And besides, we lived scant minutes away from the hospital and he was already driving that little Subaru like a Duke boy.

   Now, in Mom’s defense, she had already given birth naturally three times in her young life. Even with the season’s false labors, she had to know what she was talking about. From my nine-year old front seat perspective that night? My money was on Mom. For real.

   “I know, we’re almost there. Hang on.” Dad’s focus alternated between the pointless midnight traffic lights, the Subaru’s stick shift, and the reflection of his young wife in the rear view mirror. I cannot tell you with certainty that he was breathing. Or blinking.

   “No, I’m not kidding! It’s really time, NOW!!!”

   “Almost there, honey!”

   “Joe, NOW! RIGHT NOW!! I mean it!”

   Just recalling this moment gives me a rush of fear and wonder.

   Dad zipped off to the grassy center median just shy of May avenue and threw the Subaru into park. He raced around the nose of the car to the passenger side and pulled open the back door. He arrived just in time to catch his baby as Mom pushed. And screamed.

   Just in time.

   I will never for as long as I live forget the moment that Mom’s guttural screaming changed over to laughter. Effervescent, joyful, riotous laughter! Have you ever heard this rare, split second syllable before? Whatever pain and panic she was feeling one moment was instantly and permanently forgotten, as labor pain often is. Her voice was suddenly all thrill and love and peace, elation and amazement in the cold cargo light of the Subaru back seat.

   Then we all started laughing again, and Debbie and I hugged ferociously in the front seat. I remember twisting around to stare at my beautiful Momma, a thick white chenille blanket wrapped around her and slightly bloodied. This tiny, messy, trembling, screaming bundle on her hips. Mom was curling up easily to find her infant’s face and offered the most beautiful, most consuming smile I had ever seen.

   “It’s a girl!” Dad said shakily. I had another sister. And I loved her instantly. We all did.

   Then I got a glimpse of the gross ropy alien umbilical cord, gagged a little in my throat, and turned back to face front.

 

I remember very few details after that except arriving at the emergency room drive up doors. Dad escorted Mom with the baby girl and several happy nurses into the cavernous mouth of the hospital, and Debbie and I were on our own for a while. Family legend has it that Debbie fainted at the hospital! I wish I had more of that story for you. But I was only nine years old, and quite sleepy by then.

 

All was well. Both Mom and Genny were healthy and perfect, and that Subaru would go down in history for sure. I wonder if Dad ever drives west on the Expressway without thinking of that night. Another family legend is that we almost named Genny “Toni” because she was born directly across from an Italian restaurant, Tony’s Vi Aroma. But instead she became Genevieve Michelle Dunaway, and when I returned to fourth grade to tell the story I proudly said her name was Guinevere. Everyone believed me.

   Friends, being one of the first people to see my beautiful little sister Genny sort of gave me the idea that she was partly mine. Helping to cuddle, change diapers, and entertain tiny siblings is one thing; witnessing that first moment of air-sucking emergence into this crazy world is quite another. It doesn’t hurt that she has remained perfectly adorable and loving in every way.

   Thanks for sharing in this happy memory today.  Please feel free to leave a birthday wish for Gen here.

   Do you have a cool birth story to share? I would love to hear that, too!

I love you Gen, More than you know.

XOXOXOXO

 

My great-grandfather, Papa Joe Nieberding, was a large animal vet and a beekeeper in northeastern Oklahoma. My childhood memories are sweetened by quarts of his gleaming raw honey sitting in our pantry, and my imagination runs wild with stories about a crocodile that may or may not have lived in his watery cellar. His beautiful wife, my great-grandmother Mimi (Velma) Nieberding, was a homemaker, an accomplished writer, and an Oklahoma historian. Their old, interesting house in Miami, Oklahoma had a most magical second-story library. It was tucked neatly into the recesses of a broad wooden staircase, and it had odd little places to sit with a pillow and get lost in mildewy pages. The small library nest overlooked an expansive room with bare plank floors, layered area rugs, and a rock fireplace. I remember dozens of green house plants and long games of cards or chess at sunny window tables here, but I do not remember a television. The kitchen was adjacent, and a big table there was always circled by adults drinking coffee and laughing, discussing mysterious adult things. Probably politics, possibly bees and the weather and farming. Maybe that crocodile and its appetite for naughty children.

A few months ago my Uncle Tim visited the Lazy W to help celebrate my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. I have always loved him so much. One of my Dad’s little brothers, Uncle Tim was young enough when I was a little girl to feel like my own big brother, something I don’t actually have except by marriage to Handsome, which gave me Eddie. Well, Uncle Tim surprised me with the most amazing gift. He brought me this gorgeous ancient notebook, its spiral binding rusted and tight, its green plastic cover brittle and smudged with dirty fingerprints, one humble skinny sticker on the front bearing Papa Joe’s name and mailing address.

I was speechless then, but not now. Exploring this journal (so carefully because the pages are extremely delicate!) has been thrilling, and I want to share parts of it with you.

Late Winter 1972

This is the time of the year when the Sunshine Days are appreciated the most. All those dark rainy days when the nights are so long makes us really yearn for Spring & Summer. I go to the bee yard and see bees frantically searching for pollen and nectar. Back at the house I find a few crocus in bloom and note that the bees are testing each bloom every few minutes. I think if one had a large planting of these very early flowering plants it might be of value for pollen.

My daughters were both babies when Papa Joe passed in 1997, and for so many reasons I wish I could sit down with him now and talk about his bees and his gardens, his life. I wish I could sit down and talk to Mimi Nieberding, too, about hundreds of beautiful things. Who knows how she gently influenced my life passions? Instead I will pore over Papa’s scribbled thoughts and glean what I can then share it all here.

Also, tonight is the first Frontier Beekeepers’ Association meeting of the new year, and I plan to bring this journal with me. Papa Joe kept a list of his fellow apiarists in the front of his notebook, and believe it or not I recognize at least one gentleman’s name as being an active member still. The whole of the Oklahoma beekeeping community is rather small, after all. This should be fun.

“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”  ~Shannon L. Alder

XOXOXOXO