Lazy W Marie

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

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friday 5 at the farm, life lately

1. Doing: We just wrapped up the 2021 Oklahoma County Master Gardeners’ Tour! After receiving the invitation earlier this summer, Handsome and I have spent lots of time and energy preparing for a bus full of talented gardening friends to visit the Lazy W. I have really been missing the community, and it was an honor to be considered, so we dove in and had a blast!

Of course in true Oklahoma fashion, our long standing drought busted wide open the very morning of the tour, with a cold front and all day thunderstorms. Ha! But Jess and Alex joined us to help with guests, and we made some very happy memories despite being soaked. Also in gardening and activities news, I spent a day last week with my friend Mer. We drove to Stillwater to see her stepdaughter Ash as well as tour the OSU campus botanic gardens and the Bustani grounds. The gardens were deeply inspirational, and time with a dear friend refreshed my soul. In between these two events, gardening and farm cleanup has been the name of the game. With heavy rain predicted again tonight, I won’t be watering for a while, and all the weeding and mulching is caught up, so everything gets a little rest, including me.

May be an image of 2 people, people standing, outdoors and tree

2. Reading: I have started listening to audio books, which is a big departure for me. I have always been kind of a snob against them and will gladly explain why if you care. My first foray was a pitiful necessity: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a current group project with a deadline. I was muddling and suffering through the five-million-page book version and realized I would not finish it in time to participate in the remote book club discussion, and I have really wanted to participate with this particular group for a while, so I broke down and paid for an Audible subscription. Friends, it was a lifesaver worth every penny of the fourteen dollar fee. The talented narrator helped me differentiate the dozens of (IMHO) underdeveloped characters with complicated Russian names (I was not forming crisp images as I read). Plus, being so busy with tour prep these recent weeks, I had a hard time sitting still to read. at all Audio helped me power through a classic, and I am glad for it. Since finishing The Idiot, I decided to keep up the audio momentum during housework and cooking hours. Yesterday I started listening to Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Nice palate cleanser, you know? As for actual reading, my whole body and soul are still vibrating from The Well Gardened Mind by Dr. Sue Stuart-Smith. I’ll have a full review for you soon. More exciting than my review, though, is that this weekend we are hosting an in person discussion brunch at the farm! Several friends read it along with me, and we are lucky enough to have snagged the author for a Zoom interview!! I cannot wait to meet her online, ask her some questions, and lavish her with affection for her gorgeous piece of work. And yes I will share more of that experience here, next week.

3. Eating: I personally cannot get enough eggs, Greek yogurt, and walnuts lately. Sounds pious, but I don’t mean it that way. These cravings have been as real and insatiable as tortilla chips and guacamole or dark chocolate and almonds. This week we have enjoyed a couple of different versions of homemade enchiladas and seared jalapenos, which was fun with friends here for dinner, plus one new sugar cookie recipe, which I baked strictly to fragrance the house on our first rainy day. Sadly, since Handsome is requesting fewer sweet treats these days, I have no idea what to do with all of my autumn baking energy. It is soon going to be an actual problem. Friends and neighbors should begin expecting anonymous deliveries of apple cider donut bread, pumpkin muffins, brookies, and apple-cinnamon rolls.

4. People News: My never-stop-working husband just passed his fifteen year mark at the Commish! This feels like such a pretend milestone, as if the real one is much more substantial, because each of those fifteen years has been so packed with drama, uphill battles, stunning accomplishments, and paradigm-shifting life changes, both for us and for his professional community. So much history under his belt, and all while our own story rages on in the periphery. We were practically newlyweds when he started and have built the farm during those years! Overall, what a beautiful whirlwind of endurance and growth. And a great portion of it has contributed to the enrichment of our marriage, for which I am so thankful.

5. Animal News: Little Lady Marigold is still sweetly aggressive and absolutely stuck on her morning routine. She also continues to be people shy. Did she even peep around the corner during the tour? No, but Meh made lots of new friends that day. We overheard some ladies pitying him for being so wet, and he ate it right up. The two flocks are still cooped up until my gardens heal a bit more from their recent reign of free-range terror. Klaus misses his bird friends, so I let him in the big pen every day to play. We are, not surprisingly, collecting a glut of eggs again.

Okay, more stories and updates soon! I would love to know what’s happening in your world. Are you sinking into autumn where you live? Are you baking or decorating or gardening accordingly? Anyone running a fall marathon? I’m not, but I am slowly ramping up mileage and feeling better than ever.

Thanks for checking in, over and out!

“For it is the body, the feeling, the instincts,
which connect us with the soil…”
~Carl Jung
XOXOXO

October Ice Storm

Checking in from the farm! Like almost everyone, we have been without power since yesterday and are coping in all the usual, modern ways. I will not complain about being in a warm, dry house with books and blankets, a fireplace, and snacks and bottled water. 💜

The ice storm has taken out or shredded many of our beautiful trees, which is a bit gut wrenching, but we know from experience that after a big cleanup we will have lots of wood to use and the forests and meadows will heal themselves in surprising ways. My gardens are officially done for the year, ha!

Today, with temperatures climbing slowly, the ice is beginning to melt. I can hear it falling outside, a much gentler sound than so many violent, crashing jolts from trees breaking yesterday and overnight. The middle field is flooded and the pond is high again, which is a really good way to go into winter. We are so thankful that our animals are safe and healthy and that (so far) we have not discovered any trees fallen on fences or out buildings.

Praying for everyone out working on power lines and in grocery stores, for hospitals still coping with being overrun and understaffed, for homeless people and jobless families, and for those not coping well with these layered, compounding stressors.

It’s a lot. Every storm eventually ends, and we always get a chance to clean up the aftermath and restore ourselves (and each other) to the comforts we crave.

I love you, friends!! Hoping you are cozy and finding ways to be happy.

Choose Joy.
-Marie

autumn begins, first day of the last 100 days of 2020

On this cool and rainy, strangely quiet Tuesday, we celebrate the first day of fall and begin the last 100 days of the calendar year. I am always drawn to the magic of transition, and this moment in history feels especially worth a pause, a slow look around, and an expression of gratitude. Today also feels like a good day to set precious intentions for finishing this year strong and happy.

We are learning to brace through disorder and seek out the loose ends that might lead us somewhere more beautiful than we ever dreamed. We absolutely have the skills to recreate lives and families and societies, to rebuild them from the crumbles.

We are learning to find pleasure and satisfaction in simpler pursuits, and we may never again take for granted the freedom to gather face to face with loved ones, around small tables, in large groups.

We are bonded together over the importance of democracy and common decency. We see how ugliness breeds ugliness, in politics and beyond. But we also see how lovingkindness can heal deep wounds, how listening can usher in better understanding, and how wonderful it can be to step outside of old boxes.

The distance between people feels great at times, but we are learning to bridge it with more phone calls and more virtual game nights and more handwritten letters. Communication is improving. We have needed this in many ways.

We all have multiple purposes in life, and maybe like me you have been learning through pandemic what some of those purposes are. Maybe this long, unusual year is serving to distill some theoretical ideas in our hearts and help us shed distractions and focus in on what we want to do with our lives. I feel it, like a bass drum in my ribs. And I wish it for you.

an expanse of mountains draws out my thoughts and feelings the same way a starry night can

I don’t know about you, but I have learned that planning out our days and weeks is good and routines feel great, but with both of these, being flexible is crucial. There is a gracefulness in this that can serve me for the rest of my life, if I allow it to.

Mindset matters. How we frame experiences, the expectations we place on life events from the mundane to the momentous, is what colors everything. (Seasonal shifts are a great time to remember this, because we get to decide whether summer fun is over or a cozier, more sensual, less laborious time is just beginning. Example: I may eaten my last watermelon for a while, but that first pot of butternut squash-coconut milk soup is soon happening!)

While writing the above thoughts, I spent a little time sifting through the things in my heart that I would like to have accomplished by the end of the year. I wrote out my list of intentions for the next 100 days. With some effort, I kept the list compact (seven definable goals) and stayed focused on the values that have been offered to me in life lessons since March: Home and hearth, excellent communication, gratituide, literacy, purposeful living, health and vitality, and better stewardship, to name a few. Then I broke the intentions down into fourteen daily actionable habits (remembering that flexibility might ask me to not be perfect every single day, ha). Three months plus change is a nice slice of time for focusing on special things.

I think it’s extra wonderful that we are having cool, rainy weather today, for this thoughtful pause. If intention setting is your thing, I highly encouage you to take a moment today and deliberately frame the next 100 days. Take back this year that so many would have us write off. Make it yours. At the very least, soak up this seasonal transition and look around your life to take stock of how this historically bizarre year has blessed you, how the weirdness has created magic in your life. If you need help with this, let me know. I woudl absolutely love to chat.

Take care, friends.
XOXOXO

headlines & themes this week

Around the Farm:

The animals are enjoying our mild weather. The horses, llamas, and Little Lady Marigold, our timid and solitary sheep, are all snoozy and calm. They watch the skies change and graze to their hearts’ content. Our two geese still wander free, and I love this very much. They nest anywhere they want to and do little damage. Klaus has not murdered them, not even once. The chickens are rewarding us for the nice weather (as if we are responsible for it) with heavy, thick-yolked eggs, shells in every color from tan to heavy brown and a blue-mint green. Do you remember Zoom, our little quarantine hatchling? She has outgrown Zsa Zsa now, and clearly Zsa Zsa, a fancy Polish girl, was just her surrogate mother. Zoom is growing quickly into a picture perfect Auraucana. For our Pacino devotees, please rest assured that he is still wildly happy living outdoors in the South Coop. One red hen in particular keeps him company on a daily basis, and often six or seven other chickens join the fun inside his private quarters. It’s fine. It’s fine!

While plenty still remains and is thriving, I have been ripping out exhausted remnants of the summer gardens, making space for what comes next. Today the boys and I walked through Scissortail Park then did a little easy shopping around town, and I brought home a good amount of mums, pansies, ornamental cabbage, and a few other fun perennials. I did hold off on buying pumpkins until Jess and I can explore together.

We closed and covered the pool yesterday. September 19th is a respectable date for punctuating a long, happy swim season. We are okay with it. Do we love summertime so much and still crave a trip to a beach somewhere on the Gulf? Yes. Yes of course we do. But how wonderful that we enjoyed the pool and deck for so many happy months of this very weird year. And since the end of melty heat and intoxicating coconut oil and chlorine also means the beginning of cool, crisp walks outside and longer bonfires, then the task at hand is to count our blessings and pleasures. This is almost always the task at hand.

The yurt is fully built now and about ready for a floor inside. We are leaning toward mulch, to amplify the cedar-steam experience. Lots of friends and family have already visited to do a little socially distant painting on the exterior covering, and we are in love with it all. Just look at this cute brother-sister duo!! The Whitley crew added lots of color and love to this project, for which we are so thankful. They are all very special to us.

Seasonal Shift:

Our temperatures and humidity have dropped, and the leaves are changing just so delicately, so gently. We have opened the house windows several times and are planning a few repairs and beautification projects around the house to caplitalize on the comfortable afternoons. Personally, although I did bake pumpkin bread once, I resist diving straight into cold weather anything, because I know that soon enough it will be plenty cold for longer than we like. I have my feet planted pretty firmly in this transition season, determined to enjoy all the in-between beauty that comes with it. Lots of ease, lot of fresh air, in every sense of the expression. A long, fruitful pause between extremes.

Read, Watch, Listen:

There is a lot to be said for good communication, for granular expression, as Bree Brown says. I listened to her podcast episode on emotional literacy and ended it feeling challenged to sit more comfortably with my feelings and then to express them more clearly, more effectively. I ended it deciding to answer my husband better when he asks are you ok. I also decided to start finding more specific ways to discover how my people are doing.

Brad and Steve honestly have the best material. I cannot get enough. Their podcast episode on burnout and the pandemic was so helpful. Give it a listen. I have a whole post in draft, outlining how it impacted me. How are you doing, on the burnout barometer?

I am almost done reading To Shake the Sleeping Self. It is the memoir of a young man who, together with an acquaintance from work, took a nearly spontaneous bicycling trip from Seattle all the way down to the tip of Patagonia. It has inspired me, certainly, for both physical endurance challenges and for deeper self exploration, but also to travel more and to travel better. Going off beaten paths, meeting more people, seeing unseen places and rediscovering new beauty. I just finished a chapter where they stopped in Moerlia, Mexico. This is a town in the mountains with which Jessica’s boyfriend Alex is intimately familiar. I love hearing him describe the culture there. It’s nothing like the tropical, touristy slice of Mexico we experienced on our honeymoon (though wow that is beautiful too).

Have you considered the Netflix series called Ratched? We are big fans of American Horror Story, and this is a similar viewing experience. We binged it this past week, and I think it made Saturday night popcorn taste even better than usual. Dark! Dark and adult. Not for kids, in case you were wondering.

Are you following Morgan Harper Nichols yet? Because if you are a living, breathing, feeling, evolving, hurting, or otherwise hungry human being, then you sould. She is easily found and propogated on Instagram, but she has a strong presence pretty much everywhere I look. Bob Goff even interviewed her recently! Gorgeous. Noursishing. Makes me cry and makes my mouth water all the time.

And then this short essay on a beautiful, anxiously aging woman, I ran across it on Facebook:

How many years of beauty do I have left?” she asks me.
How many more do you want? Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old and your beauty rises
in ways your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and ripe
having carried the weight of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame with winter
and you have decades of learning and leaving and loving
sewn into the corners of your eyes
and your children come home to find their own history in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail ferociously
and have gained the capacity to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart.
Queen owl wings beating beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin, remember?
This is when I will take you into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.
~Jeanette Encinias

Find more poetry by Jeanette Encinias here.

People:

Jess and Alex invited us to their house for dinner Friday night. Jess set the table beautifully and spent several hours preparing us a gorgeous, delicious meal. It was part belated birthday fun for Handsome, part just touching base with each other. We took Klaus along, and he and Bean partied hard while the rest of us did not cheat at cards whatsoever, despite the rumors.

During our cards game, Alex got a phone notification about the passing of Justice Ginsburg. It is just so sad, and her life was so truly humbling and inspiring. We had one more good conversation about this with the kids, in a long line of good conversations. They are two of the smartest, most thoughtful people I know. We are so happy to spend time with them, watching them sort out their beautiful lives and express themselves. I think that I will always remember sharing that moment in history with them, at their dining room table.

This collection of short tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg is worth reading. What a legacy. We will all be watching our collective love for her grow over time.

Final Thoughts for the New Week:

The world is changing, we are all feeling it. But the world is as beautiful and magical as it is broken. We are every bit surrounded by miracles ready to happen and dazzling grace as we are burdened by tragedy, difficulty, and grief. We are not robots. We get to creatively choose how we respond to every single detail, even the curveballs. Especially the curveballs! We get to take hold of our own energy and make something breathtaking with the gifts we are given, which are numerous.

Hang in there. Write some Senses Inventories this week. Reach out to your people. Drink more water. Exercise in a new way. Take it all in. Count your blessings and register your pleasures, and if you’re in a dark place, know that things always turn around.

“Fight for the things that you care about,
but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
~Ruth Bader Ginsburg
XOXOXOXO

small changes, big miracles

Even before Labor Day weekend, when Oklahoma was still hot and scratchy and humid, when we were still slow paced and sticking to ourselves in that humid, chlorine scented, bare ankles kind of way, the wild sumacs turned a purplish magenta. It was the first, brash signal, found mostly on hidden trails. Everything else was still the solid, lush, emerald green and as hot as the Amazon.

Then on September 8th, on the evening of Jocelyn’s 25th birthday, a cold front moved through. Temperatures dropped sharply as daylight faded, and the sky let loose buckets and buckets of truly cold rain, like so much pent up emotion. Our dear friend lost one of her dear friends. We all cuddled up at our respective homes, hoping for and trusting in The Very Best Possibilities. Handsome and I ate ate bowls of cozy comfort food and watched a show about surviving in the Canadian Arctic. Alone, together.

Now, after just two days of this premonitory autumn cold shoulder, the Elm trees are yellowing brightly to catch up with the sumacs, so many leaves now confetti-strewn across the back field. Oaks are soon to follow. And the sedum is blushing into that dusty lavender brown. Armfuls of sunflowers and hydrangea blooms look heavy with their burdens of rain, and faded, but still plenty full of secrets and surprises.

This weather is a shift for all creatures great and small. Llamas go insane, especially Meh. Honeybees rally around their queen. Hens lay eggs again. Klaus relishes the fifty-five degree days and remembers how to sprint and chase down semi feral forest cats. Once again he spends his energy in great, lusty bouts, untamable, and then is content to snooze between missions, this pattern on repeat, all day long.

These are the transition days. After so many years here (13!), this is all finally more familiar to my body and spirit than all of my previous autumns, all those childhood years of football games and chili cook offs, all those young-family days of back to school events and late night volleyball or basketball practice. This is home and home base and we have a good, natural rhythm here. One worth keeping. This is more than some extra escape. I have unending work worth doing, and I am so thankful for it all.

How awe-inspiring, that so much can change in a couple of days, following the shift of small details quite outside of our control. How wonderful that air temperature and light differences and moisture can, together, generate so much beauty and energy.

Let’s help each other remember that the Very Best Possibilities are more than flimsy maybe ideas. They are all of the refreshing miracles we have been craving and counting on. Coming at us in the perfect time. Outside of our own doing. Just like autumn.

“Here is joy that cannot be shaken.
Our light can swallow up your darkness,
but your darkness cannot now infect our light.”
~C.S. Lewis
XOXOXO