Lazy W Marie

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

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early october moments (tgif)

Does anyone remember Brene Brown’s old school TGIF posts? Her break down (Trusting, Grateful, Inspiration, Faith) is a lovely way to punctuate the work week and step mindfully into a recharging weekend. I am sharing my version today, and if you have a moment, I hope you’ll share a bit of yours, too.

What are you Trusting? This week I am trusting that God is working behind the scenes on our biggest prayer requests, all the important things we cannot change on our own. I am trusting Him to provide for and protect Jocelyn above and beyond what she can do for herself, to remove destructive forces from the Commission, to heal a few precious loved ones who are sick and hurting, and to replenish our water supply after such a long, hot drought.

For what are you Grateful? I am immensely grateful for our beautiful home, for my ever ripening marriage, for our close knit extended family and mosaic masterpiece of friends. I am so thankful for this recent garden season and for the chance to guide Jessica through her own first big garden season. I am thankful for the shift in weather, the promise of time to read and nest and write more soon. I am grateful for the flowers still blooming like crazy.

((an easy walk around the farm yielded me this surprise bouquet, and I love it))

What is Inspiring You? Recently I have been soaking up stories about gardening on a shoestring and all the many things we can do to beautify our outdoor spaces with just work and creativity, rather than always spending lots of money. Moving and dividing plants, massaging compost, and generally caring for the garden inspires me. I am inspired by the sumac branches that boast green, red, orange, and yellow, all at once. How they are in no hurry to finish the transformation. They can hold an audience with ease. I am inspired by a combination of music by Leon Bridges and Taylor Swift then the scents of rain and pumpkin bread. I am wildly inspired by my husband and the way he works and by Jessica and the way she squeezes every available minute of her day to be outdoors. I am also inspired and awakened by a podcast I heard this week about time management. It asks, what are the things for which you feel you do not have enough time? My singular and immediate response was writing. So I have decided to get back to writing daily.

How are you practicing your Faith? I have been making an effort to speak my thanks aloud as often as possible, all throughout the day. Klaus is used to it, haha, as are the horses and chickens. I have also been reading my devotional and Bible passages early in the morning, while my mind is sill warm and pliable from sleep, and writing down all the joys and answered prayers from the previous day. These small practices keep me tethered and encouraged. I am still moving those gratitude and cocreation muscles by giving thanks ahead of the miracles. This is sometimes easy and sometimes hard, which is ok. It works.

Happy Friday, friends.
Thank you for stopping here.
I hope you are inspired
to mark the goodness in your life
and really enjoy it.
XOXOXOXO

miracles brewing in the late summer storms

Around sunset one evening last week, a mild storm gathered. We walked around the farm gathering the free range birds, I flaked out some bedtime hay for the horses, and Handsome obliged Klaus with his requisite post-dinner fetch throws. The skies grew bruised and moody, the clouds lowered, and a cool wind combed over us. After such a brutal heat wave and drought most of the summer, these were foreign details, sensations we had almost forgotten.

I grabbed my husband’s hand and said, “Let’s pray for the kids. For everyone.”

We stood in the front yard between the house and the yurt and faced north to watch the swirling, dimensional weather. We continued holding hands and prayed aloud for those closest to us. We prayed for some hard situations at the Commission, too. We prayed for a few dear friends. We gave thanks for innumerable miracles in our lives, both very old and very recent. We gave thanks for this little farm that has survived another extreme weather season, for all the birthdays, for all the fun and hard work and rest afforded us.

We prayed for the kids again.

And my heart lifted.

I got that giggling feeling that so often starts in my hips and rises through my belly and lungs. I let it bloom into a smile while we prayed and watched the Pine Forest and listened to the chickens quiet down. It felt wonderful and natural to be submitting needs and wants to God without begging Him. And in the shadow of the front edge of that storm, I felt revolution coming.

Today more fresh weather rolled in, an even cooler and much gentler rainstorm. I was at the local reservoir running a few easy miles, and the sky grew thick and woolly. The first few raindrops might have been my own sweat, but soon enough the moisture felt cold and consistent. I let it soak me and remembered many of the prayers we uttered a few nights ago. I thought back over the years, of how many miracles have burst forth in our life in what appeared to be an instant. One phone call, a sudden announcement at the office, an email, a visitor. A realization.

Everything can turn on a dime, and that is to be celebrated, not feared.

As we begin a brand new month and likely a new season, my heart feels stronger than it has, maybe, in years. I feel more attuned to Love and more expectant of miracles big and small, and this time in a much happier, less desperate way. Because this is how life is supposed to be. Rich with blessings and mercy. Alive with texture, change, mystery, peace, adventure, and Love.

I bid adieu to August in an Instagram post and my husband said it almost made him cry. I get it. Summer is a fun, free, celebratory time. August contains his birthday, too! And we always hate to see certain chapters close.

But this next little bit will be so good. Probably better in many ways. Maybe with fewer difficulties. Because all the late summer storms are hiding miracles we have not yet seen. Answers that we have sought earnestly and should absolutely expect at just the perfect moment.

As I finish writing this, rain has picked up pace. It is pinging and echoing in the chimney. Klaus is on the concrete floor, snoring contentedly. The farm is, otherwise, nearly silent. Ready for and open to whatever is coming our way.

Trust in the Goodness of Life
XOXOXOXO

end of season garden decisions & personal weirdness

This is a true story, but I don’t know whether to start at the end (is there ever really an end?) or at the beginning (where is the beginning, exactly?).

It’s about gardening, personal restraint, and fuzzy memory that is either regret or relief.

Yesterday after my run, I stopped to browse the clearance sale at Earl’s, my favorite gardening center. Their greenhouse shelves were thinner than usual, but what they still had was as healthy and beautiful as ever. I loaded my arms with a tray of fluffy, deeply hued coleus and lantana, all quart-sized beauties for a fraction of the original cost. I told myself they would look good until Halloween or later, the lantana would prossibly come back next year, and I could even take cuttings from the exotic coleus. A smart purchase, if I did say so myself.

Then I wandered over to the shrubs. My mouth watered over the long limbed climbing roses and thematic viburnum. I quizzed myself about some icy blue tinted evergreens and how good they would look with a red crepe myrtle. Then I saw forsythia.

Fall gardening is where my mind is for vegetables, but spring gardening is where my landscape needs a planning boost. As most gardeners would agree, forsythia could go a long way toward providing that. At just $19 per three-gallon shrub minus a 25% clearance discount, I could make a solid investment in springtime cheer for less than the cost of instant gratification coleus and lantana.

So I put all those plants back where I found them and walked around for another ten minutes, consulting myself and getting quite dizzy because I had just run fasted after a full morning of chores and was hungry.

I walked around the herb tables, tried to remember what else I was going to buy for the fall garden, and got in a little argument with myself about where I would even plant the forsythia if I bought them.

Eventually I walked to the cashier, empty handed. She recognized me.

“Oh hey, how are you? We haven’t seen you in a while!” That was true. I had not been in since early June. I’m not mad at them or anything! I just had enough plants and have been trying to limit extra driving. But I wasn’t mad at them!

We chatted like old friends as I confirmed the sale price of the forsythia, then I smiled, said thanks, and proceeded to leave without buying anything. This might have been the first time I ever visited Earl’s without buying anything.

This sweet girl’s bright smile fell all the way into a frown, and she furrowed her pretty brow. “Oh, ok? Bye?”

As if resisting the urge to buy plants wasn’t enough of a demonstration of free agency, I also resisted the urge to explain myself. I just walked toward the exit, free as a bird.

Well, almost.

As I pushed open the glass door I said in a way too loud, way too high pitched voice, “I’ll probably see you Friday or Saturday!”

“Oh ok!” She smiled again and beamed. I wanted to give her a hug, but I took my sweaty, hungry self to my car.

That was all yesterday mid-morning. I drove straight home and went about my day doing housework and planting fall greens, bathing Klaus, talking to the horses, coordinating weekend plans, etc. Normal Tuesday stuff.

Fast forward several hours.

In the early evening, our area enjoyed a sudden rainfall, and I thought to myself, “How nice that those coleus are getting a good drink already!”

To which I obviously replied, “No, you didn’t buy them!”

“Oh right.”

Handsome and I had a late and offbeat dinner, watched some tv, and slept soundly. Early this morning, I woke up in a slight panic, worried that I forgotten to plant the forsythia. Because, you may recall, I couldn’t decide where to plant them, so there was no clear image of them anywhere in the ground, in my mind.

“No, remember, you didn’t buy those either?”

“Oh right.”

So now I want them again. Who else will buy them, like they are puppies up for adoption?

The End, Probably.

stream of consciousness, early july 2022

I have been in one of those pleasant storms of coincidence lately, one of those brief and lovely seasons that feeds you layer upon layer of soul food, from a surprising variety of sources, at just the right moments. Books, interviews, conversations, and spiritual affirmations have been flooding me for several weeks, and I am so grateful. I’m trying my best to harness it all, to capture not just the words and themes but also the symphony of sources, because that has been much of the beauty. I feel humbled to receive encouragement from people I respect and love. I feel thrilled to discover actionable ideas from people who know more than me about things I care deeply about. And I feel hopeful that I am on the right path, maybe more than ever before. This all is a full spectrum pleasure, a refreshment and fortification which I have desperately needed.

In between it all, summer is in full swing in Oklahoma. Most days, the work at hand entails just keeping the farm alive and hydrated, animals safe in the extreme heat, gardens somewhat productive, beautiful enough to enjoy privately. We are very much at that point of the year when I find it hard to remember what a deep freeze feels like. The other day I dug around for something in a coat closet, moved a pair of winter boots, and laughed at how far away it seems that I was spending five minutes bundling up in layers just to go do one quick round of frigid feedings or habitat checks.

The book How to Do Nothing by Jenny O’Dell happened across my path right as I was losing my appetite for the trappings of social media. Not losing my appetite for connection, just the junk and noise of it all. You know. This book deserves a full review, which I will share soon. Then Red Dirt Kelly, my friend and a brilliant woman we feel lucky to know, invited me and two other women specifically to read a unique book by Ada Calhoun, Also a Poet. This book is bearing more heavily on me than I could have guessed it would, and I am very excited to soon meet my two new friends, hug Kelly, and discuss the first half next Saturday. Also a Poet is almost a biography within a biography, or a memoir within a biography, or something like that. Fascinating characters and clean, insightful prose. Mostly, it has fully rekindled my desire and calling to write.

Then I had a waking dream just as I was finishing up a round of antibiotics for (probably) salmonella poisoning. It had to do with book cover art, and my hands shook as I told my husband about it.

We had another brief health scare with Chanta. He is a sturdy but undeniably aging horse, and gosh we love him. Every year we love him more, and every year he seems to slow down a bit, which is to be expected. Maybe I need to get him to read Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra? Anyway, this threw me into more equine reading material, which actually calmed my heart so much. Our horses are doing great, all things considered. And we will give them the best possible days for as long as possible. This all led me to send a thank you to our friend Tracy who is always there to answer horse questions when we have them. Then I started reflecting on all the many questions I have been able to answer for gardening friends. Which led me to think again, and more gleefully, about how good the world is because so many people dive headlong in their passions. I want to be a lifelong learner of as many good topics and skills as possible.

Perhaps, like me, you are noticing more and more “prepper” advice in mainstream media. Lots of people are responding to rising food process and interrupted supply chains with foreboding advice about growing and preserving, hoarding, prepping, saving, you name it. IIt often feels unnecessarily panicky to me, but then I admit to having an allergy to fear mongering and anger generators. It seems like we have enough of those two types of energy to keep us alert, you know? Victory gardens, sure. Yes to growing a garden, no matter what your economic status, yes to learning a few new skills no matter what your upbringing. And actually I think this generation has many advantages over our great grandparents, who survived the Depression and World Wars. We have more general and specialized knowledge, we have a communal sense of urgency, and we have recent history to show us the dangers of soil depletion, chemicals, and monocropping, among other things. In order to harness the edge I believe we have, all we really need to do is slash distractions, go deeper instead of broader, and get to work. Be resourceful, creative, and diligent.

This is where How to Do Nothing was so useful to my thinking. That we can accept the invitation to live according to our natural design and just use technology as a tool, not let it rule over us. That we can reclaim long stretches of time, immediately, for our own private consumption, owing nothing to anyone,  is just a luscious, greedy, deliriously happy idea to me. I love it. I am here for it, as the kids might still say.

Do the kids still say things? Or are they too sad, as a group?

Overnight, we lost Rick Astlee, the one eyed duck. We are heartbroken, as we always are to lose any farm-ily member. He was special. He survived ice storms and bathtubs residencies. He chose to live with the flock when given the opportunity to float on the pond. He survived that goose attack, of course, which is what left him one eyed and limited in navigation skills. He had a best friend named Mike Meyers Lemon, who must be even more sad than I am today. Handsome and I are thankful to have had that beautiful little boy for as long as we did, but we are definitely going to miss him. He is buried in the front field, in wildflowers alongside the meditation path.

In happier news, today the llamas enjoyed a long, drenching afternoon beneath the sprinkler. Romulus especially luxuriated in the water, and it made me happy to walk out and see him standing or lounging in the spray. All day he turned his body and let his woolly self get soaked. Little Lady Marigold seemed offended by the offer, honestly.

Look closely and you might be able to see the water spray headed for Romulus.
It reached Meh, too.

So much can change in such small windows of time. We are constantly on the knife edge of transformation, even if it often seems like change takes forever. Miracles happened constantly, sometimes overnight. One phone call, one bold decision, one enthusiastic mindset shift or eye to eye conversation can be what triggers a detour to a better storyline, and I love that. Keep chipping away at your biggest desires. Keep dreaming them and believing in them. Pray, too, as you work. Imagine them perfectly fulfilled.

In my garden, in my marriage, in our family, in our community… With hopes and dreams to be what we were designed to be, to live more fully and love more deeply, I want every drop of it.

More soon, friends. Thanks so much for dropping in.

If these words can do anything
if these songs can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars
Transfix us with love
-Joy Harjo
XOXOXO

friday 5 at the farm, late may 2022

Hello friends, happy Friday! And happy Memorial Day Weekend to everyone stateside. In Oklahoma, we are bouncing back from a week of luscious rainfall and unseasonably cool temperatures, and we are happy about all of it. The relief, the return to normal, the weird rhythm. Our pond is brimming, my rain barrel is full, and the gardens and pastures are deeply hydrated but not flooded. I think the four leggeds were growing weary of sheltering in place, haha, but they are now luxuriating in abundant sunshine, so no worries.

Little Lady Marigold enjoying breakfast at daybreak, with Klaus supervising
(look closely in the distance).

Here’s a short and sweet Friday Five at the Farm to catch us up.

ONE: The pizza garden is as planted as it will be for a while, and everything is growing measurably, especially since the rain. I need to do some more weeding and distribute more compost and shredded oak leaves, but overall I am thrilled with how this little experiment is progressing. It actually almost looks like a giant green pizza, ha!

TWO: I am happy to report that Zoom, our little pandemic hatchling, is now laying eggs reliably. She provides several small, bantam sized, off-white eggs per week, and I am so proud of her. I am sad, however, to report that the three little peeps who hatched this Mother’s Day have since perished. One by one, the broody hen who hatched them brought them out to learn normal chicken things, and one by one they did not survive. Next time we have a clutch warming, I will prepare a nursery like we did in the old days, to ensure their safety. Sometimes letting nature take its course works out; sometimes it does not.

THREE: Did I tell you yet that Little Lady Marigold received her first ever shearing? Approaching her Lazy W anniversary, we wrangled her up (Klaus helped), got her into the bright yellow halter, and imposed on her a haphazard but weather-appropriate, all over haircut. She looks so much smaller now, I can’t believe it. Her svelte little lamb figure really accentuates her menacing stick legs. And the heaps and mountains of sheared off wool are an amazing sight. I keep intending to give it to the chickens for their nesting boxes, but I don’t want to stop looking at it.

FOUR: Family fun abounds! Handsome recently brought home some exciting news from the Commish which heralds a brand new chapter not only for him but also for the entire agency, and I am so proud and happy. We are also preparing for a big party here next month, to host the entire Public Utilities Department. I love any big party, and I am beyond excited to see old Commish friends and meet new faces! Also, Jess and Alex are doing great, working hard as usual and spending time with us often, for which we are so thankful. Alex’s mom sweet mom Araceli was in town recently and joined us at the farm for dinner al fresco. The pups swam, and the weather was perfect. That same weekend, we gathered with dozens more friends and family to celebrate my sister Angela’s birthday and her seven years of sobriety. Our other little sister, Gen, flew in from LA to surprise her, as did Ang’s son and daughter in law. Over Father’s Day next month, Mom and Dad will be in Spain visiting my brother Joe and his family, so we had a small brunch for them while so many of us were together. SO much to celebrate right now! We are soaking it up. Letting the joy settle deep in our bones.

FIVE: Thank you to everyone who has been following the interviews! I sure had fun writing about my husband, and I have several more folks lined up. This next series will be about individual people I just happen to find fascinating, not necessarily pandemic questionnaires like last year. If you know someone who would be a fun read, send me a note!

Okay, that’s it for today. Gardening never stops, the animals keep me busy, I never have enough time to read all the books I want to read, and life is jaw-droppingly beautiful right now. I hope you feel the same. Thanks for checking in!

My dreams are tied to a horse that will never die
~Sting
XOXO