Lazy W Marie

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

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Hive Relocation Day

   Yesterday was an important day around here, certainly one for the hobby farmer’s history books. Maribeth visited  and helped me relocate our two bee hives from their temporary waxy box homes to their permanent wooden-ware mansions. Perhaps you remember the painting day we had just before bringing the bees home? Well, now all of that artwork and passion is being enjoyed by our 79,987 buzzing, winged children.


   In addition to moving the bees, we also collected several gorgeous chunks of honey comb and about 20 ounces of fresh, raw honey. Our very first harvest of the molten treasure was a surprise to me, as was seeing how much honey was still on the combs when we closed the hives and walked uphill. Just weeks after bring bees to the Lazy W, we have our own honey. Gobs and gobs of the thick, oozing beautiful stuff.


   Everything went so well. The hives are abundantly healthy and have multiplied much more than I expected. The interior frames are all loaded with honey comb, capped brood and capped honey. The bees were active but gentle. Incredibly gentle. At one point I was holding a frame, gazing at the many different cells and relishing a sudden forest breeze, when I felt a heavy vibration on my right hand. At least twenty bees were clustered across my gloved knuckles, buzzing and flittering without malice. Throughout our afternoon in the bee yard, Maribeth’s arms and veil were often dotted by a dozen or more bees, and they all swam loosely and peacefully in the air around us. I never one time felt threatened.

As always, Mia kept his loving vigil. He never crossed the threshold into the bee yard,
but he honked affectionately and watched us the whole time we worked.
Smoking the bees a little calms them down, and it calms me down too.
The fragrance is not terribly unlike burning sage,
a Native American practice used in all kinds of prayerful rituals.
Can you see how glossy and vibrant the honey is? And how calm the bees are?
And how much I look like a Pink Power Ranger?
Here I am using a plain spoon from the kitchen to scrape the raw honey.
Later I licked it clean and almost cried form the deliciousness.
Maribeth is using a “hive tool” to scrape that thick, luscious raw honey off of the frame.
You can see its straight path there in the gold.
Honey bees possess incredibly accurate internal “GPS” systems,
allowing them to distinguish between two hive locations only inches apart.
Bonus points if you can find the Lazy W animal portrait hidden here! 
I now know that a quart of raw honey weighs about three pounds. 
This little guy was nobody’s enemy.
He only circled our sticky tools and gloves and meandered through some clover patches.
But Maribeth did endure one sting yesterday and taught me that
rubbing a speck of honey on the site will kill the pain and reduce swelling.
   Big thanks to Maribeth for her guidance and help. If any of you lovely people should ever venture to keep bees, I hope you find a mentor like her. She makes it feel as natural and magical and unintimidating as it should, and I believe the bees are benefiting from this mood. Also big thanks to Handsome for photographing our second trip to the bee yard yesterday. I will treasure these photos.
Work Hard & Be Sweet to Each Other  
xoxoxo

5 More Pinterest Experiments

 Hi there! So, the biggest “try” in my life here lately has been running at least a couple of miles every morning then staying productive throughout each day despite the heat. Sprinkle in one minor but lingering illness, regular intervals of happy guests, and intense cuddling with my guy every night, and you have a pretty good snapshot of my life lately.
 
   I know that staying mildly productive is a lot to ask of a girl whose home bears the name “Lazy,” but the good news is that I keep discovering little projects that make me a look like a much harder worker than I really am. Leaving me more time to read, entertain and cuddle.

  Care for a quick review? I have linked to the original posts for recipe and tutorial details, but the photos are my own.

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#1. Make a T-Shirt Into a Summertime Scarf:
   I made this yellow t-shirt scarf for my friend Stephanie, and I plan to make tons more. It was so fun and easy, and once you fiddle with it for a while, it looks pretty cute too. Its light weight is nice for summer, and of course “free” is a wonderful price for any craft. I think knotting the strand ends is a good idea, but you do whatever the heck you want to do.

Tutorial from PS I Made This 

#2. Incredibly Effective Bathroom Cleaning & Deodorizing:
http://askannamoseley.com/2012/02/getting-rid-of-that-boy-smell-in-the-bathroom/

   No photo, but this works. Our downstairs bathroom has both a toilet and a urinal but neither windows for sunlight sanitizing nor any kind of ventilation, so there is zero room for error in cleaning. I promise you this method works, plus you can feel good about using fewer chemicals.

#3. Paula Deen’s Gooey Butter Cake:
 
   I made this dessert a few days ago when a cheerful menagerie of loved ones was almost due here at the farm. Between bursts of laughter and slicingly smart and witty stories, my little sister Guinevere read the recipe aloud to me. There is something about hearing a recipe verbalized that kind of cements its nutritional value or, as is the case here, total lack thereof.

   This has a lot of butter in it, you guys. And sugar and cream cheese and powdered sugar. And more butter. Therefore I highly recommend this gorgeous and decadent cake. While it baked, my house smelled like a giant sugar cookie brought from heaven on angel wings under a strand of white pearls and twinkle lights. Everyone who sampled it loved it, and even Handsome approved. It has a soft cheesecake texture but is a snap to make.

Get the recipe straight from her sweet Southern website. 

#4. Edie’s Creamy Tomato Basil Pasta Salad
   So far I have only loved every recipe I have tried of Edie’s, and this is no exception. Especially if you have some tomatoes and bail growing in your garden, try this recipe! A few weeks ago I took a cold batch of it to our most recent book club dinner, and since then I craved it suddenly one night and made a hot version of the sauce to drizzle over some skinny spaghetti. Really scrumptious, you guys. Give it a try.

Edie is also the author of the apple tart and chocolate chip cookie recipe #2, remember? 

#5. Mascara Rescue:
http://griffithsrated.blogspot.com/2012/03/frugal-friday-extend-life-of-your.html
 
   Sorry, folks. I do not really have a photo for this one either, but I can tell you that it does work. Surely you’ve seen the image on Pinterest yourself, right? Just add a few drops of eye solution to your drying up mascara, and it magically reconstitutes. I was able to squeeze another couple of weeks out of mine, which rocks.

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   Well, besides cooking, cleaning, gardening, and fake sewing, I have been realizing that heat stroke and dehydration are real. It has knocked me off of my feet more than a couple of times in a few days, making that little bit of sun glow or farm work totally NOT worth the sickness. Please take care of yourselves. Please work outside early or late or not at all, and keep cold water nearby at all times. 
What New Things Have You Sampled Lately?
xoxoxo

Make Your Own Mulch

   Probably any gardening climate calls for some type of mulch, but here in Oklahoma at the height of summertime, using some sort of ground cover between your plants is pretty much a must. We all need something to slow down weed growth and prevent the soil from losing too much moisture. I am personally not a fan of the commercially bagged mulches for which all big box stores are happy to take your loads of extra cash. I like to use either dried grass clippings, rotted dried leaves, or my new favorite… shredded paper.

   The first thing to celebrate is that shredded paper is basically free. Most offices produce it, and lots of homes do now too. You are recycling something that would otherwise go to a landfill somewhere. Around the Lazy W, just one big trash bag filled with shred is all I need to refresh the vegetable garden and fill our chicken coop nesting boxes, plus a little extra for the flower beds. You need a lot less in each little area than you might expect, and it clings to itself and retains water magically.
   This past week on Wednesday morning I scattered shredded paper all through the garden then watered it all down, deeply. I ended up getting pretty sick on Thursday, spent Friday split between the doctor and my bed, and never got back outside until sometime Saturday morning. During all of these days and nights, we had 100-plus temperatures and zero rain, so I expected some withering and suffering. You know what? Nope. The plants were still fluffy and vibrant and producing food, and the soil beneath the white shred was still damp! Seriously. I would not lie about gardening advice. I might lie about how much I weigh or the status of my library account, but not about how effective shred is as mulch. It is very effective. And I know that when it has done its job, the paper will just decompose into the earth. The worms are crazy for the stuff.
   This photo really shows how nicely some shred fills in the spaces between the growing plants. I also like how the white cools everything and brightens up the garden. I suppose if you were to shred some colored paper or used wrapping paper, all the better! The possibilities are limitless. If you try this with colored paper, will you pretty please share a photo? I would love to see that!
   Here is my soy bean experiment bed, growing like gangbusters! In the gentle morning shade, these vines display fuzzy little purple blooms which should soon grow into edible pods. My eldest human chicken is very excited about that. I’ll keep you posted.
   We are up to 714 farm fresh eggs and two and a half zillion baby cucumbers.
   This is not our biggest watermelon on the vine, but it is the most hilarious. I can see it almost from the house when I walk downhill, just hanging right there in the middle of the garden gate, looking out. It has kind of a high pitched voice and only sings, never speaks. It sings to me questions about freedom and democracy,  love and destiny. This round little fruit is heavy for its size both in ounces and wisdom.
All You Need is Love!
   Besides my garden, do you know what else I love at the farm? Everything. Specifically? I love this fuzzy behemoth so dang much. Chunk-hi let me scratch and cuddle and kiss him for about a million hours on Saturday night. He let me cover his eyes and play gone-gone-peekaboo, squeeze his long floppy ears, steer his horns, pull his beard, rub his wet leathery nose, everything… He is a big, warm, dangerously gentle hunka hunka burnin love around this crazy place.
   Okay, friends, if your garden needs some ground-level TLC, I hope you will consider shredded paper as an option. Get out there this week and enjoy all the changing beauty, no matter what else is going on. Know that your garden connects you to God.
Schedule Your Dirt Manicure
xoxoxoxo

Craving a Smart but Twisted Read? (Book Review of Survivor)

   Holding my breath and sandwiched sideways between book club projects and an ever growing Goodreads list, I have rebelled and spent the last few days peeled away from the crowd. Devouring an offbeat novel all by myself, with nobody’s permission and nobody’s company. What has been at the center of my papery affair?

Survivor
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club 



   This feels so sneaky, except that I am neither alone nor terribly original. This book was loaned to me by our very youngest book clubber, Mysti. Also, its author Chuck Palahniuk, creator of a little thing called Fight Club, comes highly recommended by Julia. 



   Ignoring these facts, I have for a few days been pretending to be an independent, free thinking reader. My ego takes what it can get.

Most of you know Julia by now. She is my baby sister’s ten-four good buddy and my west coast literary mentor. Julia is the shiz-nay. You should read my two-part interview with her here and here. She is a cool chic with a fascinating job. 
   
   Survivor has been a trippy read, you guys. When Mysti handed it over to me in secret at the end of a particularly crowded book club dinner, she touted it as “a little twisted,” and now I see why. So the question is, does having thoroughly enjoyed this book make me a little twisted? Cast your vote in the comments, please. 

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   Survivor grabbed me with the first sentence and has since then confused me, made me chuckle, made me wonder about so many social and religious themes, and inspired some fastidious house cleaning in the most literal, physical sense. (The main character is a housekeeper by trade.)

  I definitely recommend this book, though with a few caveats: Potential readers should know that a major theme of the story is suicide and that for the most part it is handled with unemotional casualness. Dark humor, certainly. The story’s sexuality could be perceived as perverse by some people, too. Finally, its religious commentary is, well, not flattering to most of the Christian community. That is sometimes uncomfortable for people, so head’s up gentle reader.


   The author’s message is somewhere behind and betwixt all of that, though. I was able to glean from these 289 pages (listed in reverse, by the way, another strange delight) a lot of positive energy and worthwhile thinking then even laugh and pretend to be really smart for a few days. 

“Still, just dawning on him is the idea 
that now anything is possible. 
Now he wants everything…
After moments like this, 
your whole life is gravy.”

   That quote is chalkboard worthy.


   Honestly, telling you what this book is about is a bit tricky. The storytelling and flavor are unconventional for sure. I know I say that a lot, but today I really mean it. The speaker jumps from present tense action to internal commentary with little warning and even less dialogue punctuation, all the while telling his own life story and keeping a myriad of story lines and character developments taut and interesting. I loved it. I may have been cringing through about a third of the pages, but I still loved it. The laughing more than made up for it.

   Palahniuk manages to wrangle so many controversial and agitating topics at once that for the first half of the book I was constantly guessing what he wanted me to care about most. Religious cultism, extreme materialism, media machinery and our new culture of attention addiction, psychobabble diagnosis obsessions (perhaps all cults unto themselves), and more. While he prompts plenty of self analysis, I gradually learned to stop forming opinions, mostly because nobody asked. That seemed to be a message unto itself: Mass movements are bad, you guys. Think for yourself but please keep your opinions to yourself. Live your own life. 


   Through one unanticipated misadventure after another, Palahniuk pokes fun at serious stuff. He makes almost sarcastic remarks on society by building his plot in ridiculous, exaggerated ways, and by inserting just enough realism to make it all believable. Then suddenly the controversial and agitating topics are so well braided together that I saw how the story would have been incomplete without any of them. And then a moment later the story has ended. Just like that. I was so frothed up by the final chapter that I had to block the remaining paragraphs with my hands, forcing myself to only read one line at a time, as slowly as possible. I was in a panic about the ending and would have been happy for the story to continue a wile longer.


   The characters of the book are as offbeat as the book itself and provide gritty, sometimes uncomfortable texture to the weird story. I found myself rooting for everybody at one time or another, only barely understanding each of them. Is this guy messing with us? Did I just fall for a big literary practical joke? Don’t care. Loved it.  

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  Rumor has it that Julia just might be able to get this dorky girl (yours truly) an interview with Chuck Palahniuk. I already have a million questions, but I am pretty sure he’ll be rolling his eyes because I missed something big. This novel is so layered with implication that I wonder if even its creator gets all of it. It would make either a fascinating or a devastating springboard for friendly debate.


   Read Survivor. Keep track of how often you cringe or laugh out loud. And get back with me. I need to talk about this in exhaustive detail.


Be Weird and Accidentally Brilliant,
and Keep Reading!
xoxoxoxo



SurvivorSurvivor by Chuck Palahniuk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


WOW. Proper review on my blog, The Lazy W:

http://thelazyw.blogspot.com/2012/06/…



View all my reviews