Lazy W Marie

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

plant health, mental health

Fourth grade Garden Club is always a delight. Every time we gather, the kids inspire belly laughs, and I appreciate gardening from a kids-eye-view all over again. On Facebook lately I have been sharing their zingers here and there, Kids Say the Darndest Things type stuff, but today I want to share something that encouraged me in a whole other sphere.

In addition to planting mustard seeds and checking the progress of our sweet peas and onions, the Garden Club lesson this week called for reviewing the basic needs of a plant and how those compare to what humans also need: Shelter (or location and soil), sunlight, fresh air, water, and nutrition.

Our lead volunteer displayed a potted plant that was pretty obviously neglected and canvassed the room for ideas about what might have gone wrong. A smattering of well informed answers rang out: “Not enough water!” “No nutrients!” “Couldn’t breathe!” Then, just as we were switching gears, at least four little voices from around the room suggested, “It’s depressed!” This garnered a mix of giggles and agreement. To be fair, every answer garners a mix of giggles and agreement. The whole group is constantly poised, for example, ready for one particular classmate to say, “My name is Christopher and I like chicken nuggets!” It literally slays every time. Christopher is jockeying for his own Netflix comedy special.

So. The moment passed quickly, as do so many high vibration moments in fourth grade, and I thought little of it until later in the afternoon. Seeds watered and tiny gloves and plastic spades shuffled away until our next meeting, the kids retreated to their regular classrooms. The Master Gardeners were debriefing a little bit. The school counselor happened to join us that day, and she seemed to enjoy hearing what we thought of our experience with her kids, who she clearly knows well and loves very much. I recounted the cuteness of their depression hypothesis for the ailing plant. She smiled, nodded, and gave some insight.

The school counselor has been teaching the entire student body ways to recognize that someone is not feeling their best, even when they don’t say so. They are learning to recognize signs of suffering in each other, simple clues that their friends or family members are not having their needs met. She has been offering them new vocabulary for describing how they feel, for understanding how others may feel, and for finding help from adults when needed. In other words, they are destigmatizing the human experience of not being okay; and they are building some pretty serious emotional literacy in the process. I was floored.

Just imagine the idea that a plant might be depressed. And imagine that meeting its basic physical needs will help it thrive again. Then apply that loving wisdom to human beings. Friends, can we please bookmark this topic for a longer conversation soon?

This curriculum would be amazing in any setting, and how much more thrilling to see the students naturally translate their knowledge over to plant life! Children tend to have an innate sense for wellness or discomfort, way earlier than they can verbalize it. This student body will have such an advantage in life.

I am so encouraged that this fresh new batch of humans is being armed with empathy, insight, and vocabulary to walk through the world more aware of themselves, more able to live kindly with others.

All of this plus, of course, the skills to grow a garden.

(How young is too young to recommend reading The Well Gardened Mind?)

Thanks for visiting this happy topic with me, friends! If fourth graders can learn to tend their emotional gardens, we can too. Hang in there.

tulip

Spring is here.
Every winter has its end.
xoxoxo

a new spin on victory gardens

Our grandparents and great grandparents had wartime versions of Victory Gardens that served them well and helped their families thrive in uncertain times. The government endorsed these efforts and more before industrialized farming took over.

Lately we are hearing more and more about “Victory Gardens,” and I expect that will only gain momentum. For a variety of good reasons, everyone seems to be rediscovering the appeal of growing food and maybe tip-toeing into sustainability.

I love this!

But…

I also see the idea ballooning in such a way that people are becoming discouraged almost as soon as they feel inspired. Lots of people are also beginning their adventure from a place of absolute terror.

In an environment of fear over rising food prices and broken supply chains, it’s easy to let something as natural and beautiful as home gardening fall into the category of obligation, panic, and unrealistic standards for success.

Let’s fix that.

Right here, today, with just a mindset shift, let’s reset. Before we write a single letter to a single lawmaker or even before we spend one dollar on grow lights or join any online forums trying to learn it all in one day, let’s rethink what a Victory Garden could possibly be, for you.

OSU OKC teaching garden

Victory could look like adding beauty, fragrance, creativity, and dimension to your life. Victory could be saving money by growing fancy herbs and better ingredients, just a little bit here and there. Victory might include just occasionally stepping aside from the bizarre supply chains we have created for ourselves or cultivating small, meaningful skills that build and compound on themselves every year. No need to be perfectly successful on your first try. Everyone fails. A lot.

squash bugs
((hell hath no fury like a gardener overrun with these monsters))

Maybe victory for you would be making memories with your children and helping them see the natural world as a source of beauty and pleasure, and then one day helping them install their own gardens. Victory could be growing chemical free food more often, while at the same time rejecting stress and guilt over still buying average stuff from the store. It’s fine! Mix it up! You garden can be a supplement way before it is a substitute.

Victory is certainly discovering new ways to enhance your outdoor space, discovering a new hobby that keeps your body lifting and stretching and breathing fresh air, keeping your eyes off of electronics for a slice of each day. Victory is blanketing the earth with more trees, flowers, mulch, and foods. Victory is attracting and feeding all kinds of pollinators and wildlife. A very beautiful Victory Garden is one that encourages diversity.

Victory might be witnessing and immersing ourselves in the intricate, powerful, unstoppable Cycle of Life, participating in the seasons instead of complaining about them, being swept up in the life affirming wealth of daylight and the nitrogen rich snow and rainfall. Victory is learning to use kitchen scraps to feed your garden rather than overstuff the landfill. Victory is being part of the solution, in your own way, in your own time, with joy and freedom and confidence, rejecting fear.

I believe that working with fear, shame, or panic will not only kill your spirit but also at least stall your garden, maybe sabotage it completely. Your mindset matters. So get that sweet and level first. Rethink what a Victory Garden could be in your life, with your circumstances, needs, and cravings. What problems are you trying to solve? Where do your passions fall, naturally? There is a garden for you out there.

fresh homegrown watermelon oklahoma
((If 2013 was the Summer of Basil, then 2014 was the Summer of Watermelon…xoxo))

Please consider growing something that makes you authentically happy. I want you, if you haven’t already, to discover for what “Victory” means for you and how to use gardening to pursue that in uniquely pleasing ways.

((20 sunflowers for Jessica’s 20th birthday… she came home the next year))

There are hundreds of ways to be a Victory Gardener.

Far be it from me to discourage anyone from attempting a true, traditional, full-fledged Victory Garden that increases your family’s groceries and stocks your pantry for winter, the kind your great-grandmother probably mastered. That is certainly within reach if you have the space and the time to devote to it. And what a noble goal! But also, I believe these other, very different gardening goals are every bit as noble.

Bonus points, always, for not using chemicals on your garden. Double bonus points for using natural fertilizers and compost. Triple bonus points for sharing your bounty and staying true to yourself as you go.

Almost done with these thoughts.

My Grandpa gave me lots of gardening advice, and it was all good. But one thing bears repeating here:

“The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.” Spend time in your growing spaces, however large or small or weird or formal they are. Just be present, frequently. Watch, enjoy, pay attention, apply your considerable knowledge and creative energy there. It needs you as much as you need it. It will reward you by growing you right alongside it.

Let’s release that weirdo pressure to be the same kind of gardener as anyone else, friends. Let’s drop the fear and panic and just grow something. Anything. Nature will support us.

Life began in a Garden,
and Victory is our birthright
XOXOXO

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.

some garden & parenting advice

Jessica started her fall garden a couple of weeks ago, and my gardener-mama heart has been so full. Daily, we have been chatting all things soil, seeds, sun exposure, needed growing weeks, frost expectations, compost methods, you name it. This is a wonderful exchange for many reasons, as you can imagine. But something stands out.

Just a short bit into the thrust of her efforts, I caught myself praying that her fall harvest would be abundant. I asked God in kind of a pleading way to reward my baby’s efforts with lots of perfect vegetables and flowers, just all the good, beautiful rewards of hard work well done. I nearly begged Him to give her the “things” that would encourage her to keep going. Proof, you know?

((daily harvest, eggs already in the fridge xoxo))

He corrected me immediately.

The best rewards of a garden are not necessarily included in the harvest.

Gardening in its purest form is an ongoing cultivation of Life, a physical expression of art and science, a balance of need and provision between man and Earth and insects and God, of creativity and learning. Gardening is an adventure of trust in natural cycles. And much of this can only be learned by trial and, mostly, error. Lots of valuable error.

I know this.

So why would I deny Jess pleasure of learning on her own? Why would I swerve her away from the immense value of the journey itself?

My Grandpa Rex was a lifelong gardener and a lifelong student of, well, everything he could get his eyes or hands on. He was famous for being okay with not having all the answers, and yet I trusted him to always eventually find the answer and call me back. He trialed new ideas in his various gardens right up to the end of his gardening years, and he had wickedly specific reasons for even the paint he used on his shed. I think of that daily. I love how he never seemed to grow the same garden twice, and he thrived through it all. I want that for Jessica. Grandpa’s life showed the fruits of his labor far beyond his beautiful tomatoes and larkspur. I want that for her, too.

((little girl jess & not yet married Jess, always playing in the garden))

I will be here to guide her as much as I can, and to share my growing adventures alongside her own. And I will help her find good answers to her excellent questions. But I will not pray merely for a good harvest. Now, I am praying for a good experience, too. For good lessons and soul checks. For epiphanies and understandings, connections, realizations. I am praying for her good LIFE. It all matters.

Then, if she pays attention and has a little luck, she’ll get fresh produce, too.

Whew, I am thankful for that mild correction. He always knows what I need to hear.

“When we plant a seed,
we plant a narrative of future possibility.”
~Dr. Sue Stuart Smith
The Well Gardened Mind
XOXOXOXO

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