Lazy W Marie

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

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Introducing Tiny Mr. T

   Well hello again.

   I want to tell you about something.

   If you and I are Facebook friends or if we connect on Instagram, then you may have noticed a flood of unusual photos lately. The Lazy W world has a new cast member… 
   Tiny Mr. T.
   He is pretty much the coolest thing ever.
   Handsome gifted me with not one but two Tiny T’s just a few minutes after I crossed the finish line at the Memorial half marathon. I laughed so hard!

   One T is several inches tall and wears a small replica race bib with my runner number on it. He sits on my desk in the Apartment and guards my messes there. The smaller one, hereafter known as Tiny T, is Polly Pocket size and has been joining me on all kinds of adventures, farm related and otherwise, ever since that Sunday.
Tiny T helps me thin carrots and radishes where they grow too thick.
Tiny T supports the slow food movement for sure.
   It’s one of those perfect, impossible to duplicate gifts. And I  hope my guy knows how much I appreciate them both.

   So now you have met Tiny T, and I am wondering if you love him as much as I do.

   The real Mr. T has been a cult favorite of mine since childhood. So cool. I tried to dress up like him for Halloween last year, but Handsome absolutely did not want to be seen with a girl dressed like that. Can’t imagine why.

   For many passionate reasons I just can’t get enough Mr. T. And no, it’s not embarrassing at all. Frankly I don’t understand why more people DON’T love him. 

   He pities fools, you guys!!!
   Furthermore:

  1. Mr. T. wears as many dang necklaces as he wants. Sorta like me, but even more. 
  2. He has the coolest hairstyle and beard, way cool, not that I would dare copy such coolness. James Harden has it goin’ on, but he was not the first.
  3. Mr. T used to carry around the biggest, bulkiest boombox just to strut through life bathed in the aura of good music. Who else is that cool? Nobody. Now we all settle for earbuds. At least some of us do still strut through life.
  4. Mr. T always seems to wearing a great threadbare denim jacket. Surely I don’t have to explain this.
  5. Mr. T is strong and capable and fearsome; but he admits his weakness, which is a debilitating fear of flying (at least in the role of B.A. in The A Team). I admire anyone who doesn’t try to conceal his flaws.
  6. Finally? He never tolerates sleeves. The original t-shirt surgeon.
Side Note: It took me forty five minutes to figure out
how to NOT say “t-shirt surgery doer.”  Surgist? Surgeryist? 
WHAT IS IT? Oh, surgeon. Right. Onward.
   So now in adulthood I cling to my action-figure Tiny Mr. T with lots of ridiculous hilarity and sincere appreciation. Since that race Sunday, Tiny Mr. T has been joining me on all kinds of adventures. It’s been a busy couple of weeks for both of us.
   Care to take a peek?
Tiny Mr. T groomed and watered my potted herbs and then insisted
I finish digging the circular herb bed outside the kitchen window.
I still haven’t quite finished it, and Tiny T furrows his brow in frustration, pitying me.
Tiny Mr. T collected eggs very early one morning
and is so short (sorry, it’s true)
that he almost got lost in the shred.
But then he is so strong that he clawed his way out. 
The hens are surprisingly not afraid of him at all.
Tiny Mr. T went with me to substitute teach a first grade class one morning.
Those precocious kids saw him in my hand and promptly asked me,
“Mrs. Wreath why are you carrying around a small James Harden?”
If you are an OKC Thunder basketball fan then you understand this problem.
I swiftly corrected their misstep and gave them all detention.
Tiny Mr. T accompanied me to a book club discussion dinner for Don Quixote.
He chimed in sparingly, believing the knight-errant hero to be quite out of his mind like Murdock,
 then pitied the next person who assigned us another classic to read. 
“It’s summertime now and we need easier stuff!” He said.
Then Tiny T went with Handsome and me to work the first car show of this new season.
He collected money and guarded it well.
Tiny T appreciates beautiful cars and is very protective of them.
On a chilly and gray Saturday afternoon Handsome and I went
to the Zombie Bolt, a really crazy fun 5-K event here in Oklahoma.
Tiny T went with us and is on the verge of declaring zombies as equally terrifying as airplanes.
Can you blame him? Tiny T is barely an appetizer to these creatures.
Although I have been trying to eat clean and detox a little, 
and be super productive and cram activity into every spare hour,
Tiny T understands the value of rest.
On a recent lunch break while subbing fifth grade, 
he urged me to chill. Have a snickers. Read a book. Order some seeds. 
I did, and it was bliss. Tiny T gets it.
   Okay friends. Are you with me? Are you beginning to feel the power and wisdom Tiny T has to offer? Will you please join his fan club? Just follow along with his adventures on Instagram and if you have a character he needs to meet, let me know! Some friends of ours are apparently searching for a tiny A-Team van for Tiny T, and I groove that.
“I believe in the golden rule.
 The man with the gold… Rules.”
 ~Mr. T
xoxoxoxo   

Spring Garden Update

   Spring is really, truly here you guys. It is here to stay, at least for a while. We may only have a couple of weeks before Oklahoma Summer 2013 descends on us in all of her hot and humid glory, so I have a lot of green and dirty living to do. Lots to prepare and enjoy before facing that particular seasonal brutality.

   The gardens are filling in their own blanks quite nicely. They require thinning and grooming every day, especially in the radish and carrot beds, but no watering! Our rainfall in Oklahoma has been mercifully consistent.

My Grandpa has always gently scolded me for planting radishes too thickly.
The result is having to thin aggressively, but my chickens & geese eat the sprouts.
Sometimes I do too, in a green salad. They look like clover & taste peppery, tangy.

   The potatoes are finally multiplying. The spinach, rainbow chard, and myriad lettuces are drop dead gorgeous. And even more delicious than the are pretty. The sweet pea and English pea vines are as tall and fluffy as anything you’ve ever seen in your life. Honestly? This year the actual leaves on the pea vine are ginormous! Like, Jurassic big. Way too big really. I am afraid of how big the peas will be. Bowling ball size? Probably.

Back Seeded Simpson and Romaine lettuce sprouts, photo taken a couple of weeks ago.
Imagine they are a million times fuller now. Because they are.

   Last night I discovered my first butter colored cauliflower you guys! She is pale yellow, dense, and perfect. Tucked primly inside the massive green plant she calls home, dreaming calmly of low-carb recipes. Her neighbor, the brussel sprout, is putting on evidence of edibility too. Broccoli, two kinds of cabbage, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, you name it. So far, except for corn and basil, we have a little bit of everything growing somewhere around here. Even chocolate mint which smells like angels in heaven are making York peppermint patties for breakfast while watching Casablanca.

This broccoli bolted on a hot day. But if you pinch off the center blooms and keep yellow leaves cleaned off,
the plant will set food peripherally and the results are DELISH.
Colorful green and red (purple) cabbages are tightening up finally, and the spinach fills in beautifully.

   Another sign of spring, Chink-hi the buffalo has begun his annual shed extravaganza  So cute. I need to snap some photos for you, because the way his body releases its winter coat, the patterns in which he gradually achieves his warm weather version of nudity, is so hilarious. Right now his skinny little rump and the wide spaces around his giant liquid eyes are the only bare spots. And they reveal how crazy thick his coat has been all these months! Like an inch of matted, woolly fur all over his strong body. No joke.

   I have had our house windows open for days. Very little wind here except during the nighttime thunderstorms, just cool crisp breezes. And temperatures are looking better and better every day. This is a rare kind of meteorological bliss for us here in Indian Territory.

   I am done substitute teaching for the school year.

   The laundry is caught up.

   The kitchen is stocked.

   And I have that “the world is my oyster” kinda feeling. Can you guess that today and for as many days after as I can manage it, Handsome will find me half-buried in the gardens? Dirt manicures, rolled up jeans, and careless ponytails. These are the days. These are the weeks.

Thornless blackberry vines crawling up our forest-pole arbor.
They have set dozens, maybe hundreds of buds already.

   This is the life.

   What’s growing in your garden? Please connect with this blog on Facebook and share photos! So fun to see what people love in different parts of this beautiful world. Happy Spring-slash-Summer you guys.

“Won’t you come into my garden?
 I want my roses to see you.”
 ~Richard Sheridan
18th century Irish playwright & poet
xoxoxoxo

 

Take a Breath

   This farm has lost its ever-loving mind. Every day we discover new chaos and silliness. Greedy horses. Specifically, Chanta. A pregnant llama who thinks its funny to never have babies. Honeybees who visit us but apparently sleep and make honey elsewhere. A parrot who screams wildly, with the appearance of random noise but with really specific messages we are slow to interpret. A cat who refuses the food we buy but also hunts the cardinals. A guard dog who escapes and runs free but gets spat on by a guard llama. A buffalo who has severe separation anxiety. Roosters who battle each other despite the fact that they share a harem of twenty hens. Geese. Just, geese.

See? Even our photos are crazy.

   If Handsome and I couldn’t laugh about it, we would be clawing our faces off.

   So we laugh. We laugh so much. And our face or more or less in tact.

   Lots to tell, more to do. Happy Tuesday everyone!

   Over and out.

   xoxoxoxo

Senses Inventory, Friday Joy

   Happy Friday afternoon my beautiful friends! What a week. Yes, I say that a lot. But I always mean it.

   What. A. Week.

   What a month.

   What a year.

   What a life!

   As we tip-toe toward the quick little recess we call a weekend, I have exactly enough time and energy for a Senses Inventory…


My youngest daughter and I saw this at the OKC Arts Fest again last week.
Every year she and I contribute to this cool community art display,
nothing more than shreds of fabric tied to some PVC structures.
And this year I am bringing the inspiration home. 
The veggie garden arbor is getting dolled up!
All visitors this summer are invited to play!

See: A pair of cardinals dancing in the air above the bird feeder. Stacks of folded clean laundry in the living room. A mason jar filled with browned but still pretty clippings from the forest. A flat of newly purchased herbs and marigolds on the table next to me. My unfinished Don Quixote. (Book club dinner is in two hours, yikes!) Shiny yellow ceramic dish shaped like cabbage leaves. Abundant, if cool, sunshine. Thick, soft green grass outside the kitchen door. One inviting chaise lounge and one shredded by a recent conflict with the buffalo.

Hear: Pacino grooming his papery feathers, blowing me parrot kisses, and clucking softly. The periodic click of the oven and hum of the refrigerator. Pickup truck driving past the farm. Wind. So much wind.

Smell: Clean laundry, pecan shortbread cookies, soapy water, coffee, roasting red grapes, seven different fresh herbs and their damp soil (I love that fragrance!), and my own perfume. Calvin Klein One today.

Touch: This beloved keyboard. My smooth cotton apron. A pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses that keep getting tangled up in my hair.

Taste: Perfect coffee. Really, really perfect coffee. The kind made with a French Press and hot cream. So good. Also, traces of olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary, plus toasted pecans and butter shortbread, all from sampling two recipes as I cooked this afternoon. Lipstick.

Think: About my daughters. Their hearts, their memories, their futures. About my parents. About the balance between living life and earning a living. About self worth and how complicated and fluctuating that concept is for me. About how I need about a month of nothing else to do so I can catch up on all of the incredible writers close to me.

Feel: Inspired. Calm. Stronger than I did this time a year ago, that’s for sure. Itching to run again. Excited for our book club dinner tonight, but also sad because we have recently lost members. Lucky. I feel so dang lucky in life.

The raised beds are growing our earliest crops like magic!!
Even the tropicals are faring well in this super weird May weather.

   What’s up with you? Was your work week overall pretty amazing? Do you have beauty surrounding you and love inspiring you? Do you have thoughts worth thinking rattling around in your head?

   Life isn’t perfect, but it certainly is full of wonder and grace. Be sure to feed that wolf, the good one, as the Native American legend goes, not the evil one.

Happy Weekending Everyone!
Thank you so much for stopping in at the digital Lazy W.
xoxoxoxo

 

 

Fueled

   It’s early Tuesday morning following the 2013 OKC Memorial marathon. The sun is still snuggled deep in the purple-black folds of the eastern sky. I am only half a cup of perfect coffee into this new day. Nothing is awake outside. Not a rooster, not a horse, not even the cranked up tree frogs who will serenade us to sleep if we let them. Wait, I do hear a goose. I think we all know which one. 

   The house feels hot and stuffy, so I open the kitchen door and enjoy the crisp breeze that promises another gorgeous day. Now the dining room is flooded with delicate birdsong and the hum of the interstate a couple of miles south.

   I feel like anything is possible.

   I know that anything is possible, so I choose my thoughts and prayers carefully. With those tightly reined, I can dream wildly. With abandon and trust.

   My feet crave the cool, spongy path of clover between the raised garden beds. My shoulders crave the sun. My eyes and nose crave a broad, curving expanse of herbs growing outside the kitchen window. I want to swim in the pond that is still topping its highest ridge. I want to explore the forest, napping on the thick pine needle mattresses and finding wild mushrooms and roses.

   I want to love the people close to me more fiercely and more gently than ever.

   Running the half marathon was one of the most positive experiences of my life. Until finishing it myself, I would have found that statement a bit cliche. So if you want to roll your eyes when you read that, I get it. Truly. But you guys… So many unexpected things happen in your mind and your body on long runs; and then so many more things happen when you share a long run with thousands of strangers… particularly in remembrance of such an event as the Murrah Building Bombing of 1995. Ignoring the myriad awakenings would be such a waste.

   So today, two days after the event, my heart is full in ways I did not expect. I love our beautiful renaissance City even more. I feel more bonded to our people, the strangers for sure but also and especially my parents in law and my brother and nephew. I feel like celebrating life more fully than ever.

   There is so much reason to celebrate.

   There is so, so much living to do!

   How are you going about it today?