Lazy W Marie

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

forty eight years and still going strong xoxo

Please join me in congratulating our parents on their forty-eighth wedding anniversary!!

((Mom, baby me, and Dad, circa 1974.))

Forty eight years. All easy, mostly uneventful, and never scary or sad.

Ha! I am kidding of course, but the best part of that joke is that somehow they do make it seem easy; and despite all the very real life storms they have weathered together, they are still here all these years later looking fresh and happy and very much in love. Mom and Dad give all married couples, young and old, an encouraging glimpse at not just longevity, but also deep and abiding love and joy. It is quite a thing to behold.

Because, couples can stay together just to say they did, or they can grow together and thrive in new and ever expanding ways. They can face trials side by side and make memories left and right, out of thin air. In a good marriage you can laugh mightily and cry honestly. You can raise a family, build and rebuild and furnish and remodel a home. You might travel less than you deserve to and work harder than you should have to, but eventually the balance is restored. You endure and celebrate and eat well together, week after week, year after year, for nearly five decades. And still have steam in your marital engine.

I truly believe that Love begets Love, in the same way that dreams beget more dreams. Life begets life. God offered us this mechanism for building powerful momentum in our lives. This must be why Mom and Dad are not just here at this milestone but, more importantly, lively and energized at it. Still refreshing the home they started on 41st street so many years ago. Getting their passports to travel the world. Always showing up for their grandkids, in every imaginable way, really in all the ways they showed up for the five of us kids, all of our childhoods and still today. We don’t deserve them.

((Mom and Dad with our entire family, missing only three of the grand kids. Baby Connor was asleep and my two girls were back in Oklahoma. We all traveled to Virginia to celebrate my brother’s change of command in the Navy.))

Our friend Mickey once paid our family perhaps the highest compliment he could. He said, “You come from a long line of effort,” referring to my family and our parents and all the love that flows through us. Though I had never thought of it in quite those words, I agree with him. We might not come from a long line of extreme wealth or pedigree or any other worldly measure, but man. We are totally saturated and fortified by effort. I think that of all the inheritance a family could receive, this must be the best. Effort and the truest forms of Love and acceptance, no mater our mistakes.

Handmade everything. Meals from scratch. Family nights and date nights made up of fun and silliness more than material possessions. Healthy habits that were way ahead of their time. A family business built from the ground up, one that sustained hundreds of young families over the decades. Innumerable traditions that, though often simple, have stood the test of time. We all carry into our own adult lives dozens (maybe hundreds) of yearly traditions that Mom and Dad instilled in us. I love that. I love it so much, to feel my childhood so vividly now, in my daily life, and in the seasonal rhythms.

((At my parents’ 40th anniversary party. Amore! xoxo))

Mom and Dad, thank you for building such an Empire of Love and Effort for all of us, for our spouses and children and friends. You continue to exemplify humor in the face of stress, tenderness in the presence of grief, steadfast commitment always, and this steady drip of ease and affection no matter how hard you are working. We are all so lucky to have your marriage as our bedrock. Your choice to start a life together forty eight years ago has flourished into a powerful sense of Home for so many people, and we all appreciate it.

My wish for you on this very special anniversary is layered: Lots of romantic meals, just the two of you. Plenty of family game nights. One very big and memorable trip to Spain soon. All of your home projects finished and thrilling you to pieces. And ongoing health and vitality so you can enjoy the fruits of so much labor.

Thank you for taking good care of yourselves and each other, so we can enjoy you all these years and into the future. Thank you for building the life you have, so we can see how it is done. Thank you for being our Mom and Dad, no mater what. Happiest anniversary.

XOXOXOXO

springtime in october

Hello again, and happy almost Halloween, 2021! A lot has happened at the farm since last I wrote here, and I know a lot has happened in your world, too.

May be an image of 2 people

We remark so often these days on the paradoxical grinding whirlwind of time, how it seems to both hover on a moment or a task and also spin wildly, too fast, all at once. How the days and weeks and months are accumulating and dissolving into memory like no year we have ever experienced before. It’s easy to guess why life feels this way right now, after the (forgive me) unprecedented chapters we have all survived. We taste life so fully now, all of us, and we like it. We cannot get enough of it. We are gluttons for living and living fully.

I am awake alone, writing this in an ultra quiet house at three in the morning, windows open with mild air seeping in, not even a trace breeze. I am enjoying the luxury of perfect coffee hot and strong in my grateful mouth and belly and my brain firing with new thoughts. The night sounds are muted, and my heart is grateful for a happy farm, for safe, well fed animals and for all these gardens that are not just thriving in autumn but refreshed, colorful, very much alive and ready for something miraculous to happen.

Everything happening is miraculous.

We are living a season of springtime in the midst of autumn. Not just this spectacular weather, but also a renewing of body, mind, and spirit. However quickly time seems to be passing, it is passing with great meaning and accomplishment. Time and energy seem to rush and flow through us like the cold Thompson River in Estes Park, powerful and cleansing, life giving. It feels incredible, this renewal. The fruits of our ongoing labor feel incredible, too. From one corner of life to another, we see goodness and give thanks for it constantly.

May be an image of 2 people, people standing and indoor

I continue to swell with pride for my husband’s professional life; how his personal evolution is bringing everything he touches along for the exciting ride. Every week we build and improve the farm, sometimes making huge changes and sometimes just tightening things up, suiting them just to our liking and hopefully the animals’, too. Our multi-generational family time is warm and glittering, an ongoing gift that truly is a dream come true. Mom and Dad are so much fun. Jessica and Alex and their sweet pups are limitless sources of joy! We are surrounded by siblings and nieces and nephews and friends who might as well be family. Every week we gather to celebrate something big and wonderful, and I love it all.

May be an image of 1 person, standing and outdoors

When Jocelyn rejoins us for the second time in this crazy life, she will have such a powerful nest to enjoy. We miss her like crazy, but in a happy, expectant way right now, not a grieving way. Like the way I felt just before she was born. This time, though, I’ll wait for it to happen naturally. She is worth every single minute of waiting. The party is going strong, showing no signs of slowing down, and she can join in anytime she is ready.

May be an image of outdoors

I have lost track of all the answered prayers. I walk the farm and meditate intentionally every day, and I try to journal enough to keep up with it all, but the avalanche of goodness is more than I can keep up with. Sometimes it literally makes me giddy, delirious with gratitude. I hope that the condition of my heart and the effort to acknowledge it here an there is enough of a thank you. Thank You.

More soon, but before I signoff, a great journal prompt:

“How much overlap is there between
what you say is important to you
and how you spent your attention
over the last month?”
~James Clear (author of Atomic Habits)
XOXOXO

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

choosing some unreasonable hope

At Lowe’s this weekend, I wheeled my cart full of rescue plants from the clearance rack in the garden center to seek out more rescues in the houseplant department. An elderly gentleman approached me, indicated my bedraggled looking bounty, and asked with too much skepticism in his soft corduroy voice, “You think those are gonna snap back?”

I was used to my Grandpa being playful and teasing and having fun, so I thrust one skinny arm into the air, gestured affectionately at the plants with my other arm, and replied with too much excitement in my own voice “Yes, I choose to believe!!”

“You think you’re just gonna water ’em and they’ll be ok?”

At this point I blacked out, spiraling into a messy explanation of all the things I might do to revive them, like trimming and soaking and shading and super-thriving, and yes of course watering and singing them Norwegian Wood, trying hard to conceal from someone else’s grandpa my growing dread.

He blinked at me, furrowed his brow and dipped his chin low, then walked away. Did not even say goodbye. Clearly I had misread his tone. So I tried to reconnect with this stranger by calling vaguely toward the back of his sloped shoulders, “They’ll snap back right?” He swiveled his head in an elliptical shape that could have been either an affirming nod or a dismissive shake, I wasn’t sure.

I looked down at my mostly dead growing projects, thought of all the brassica plants already suffering at the farm thanks to selfish, unrepentant chickens, and wondered why I hate myself so much.

On the bright side, we have lots of mulch, and mulch covers a multitude of garden sins.

The End.

“There is no medicine like hope,
no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful
as expectation of something better tomorrow.”
-Orison Sweet Marden

ducks, geese, & some related marital advice

Rick Astlee the One Eyed Duck is, really and truly, living his best life. In many ways he seems worlds happier than before the incident last winter, and if you could spend a few days with him I think you would agree. His limited vision does mean that he tilts and leans hard toward the ground, so as to see where he is going with his one good eye; and this usually means he walks in circles. But more and more, he has been stretching those circles into longer and longer ellipses. He waddles in oblong, not too elegant loops, overlapping them with greater and greater distance every day. It is pretty amazing to watch his slow, steady progress and also watch him regain some independence. Mike Meyers Lemon, his smaller duck companion, the one with the wonky wing feathers, is genuinely concerned for his friend and tries to help. Mike calls rapid fire to Rick, “quack-quack-quack,” and Rick answers languidly, “quaaaaack” and Mike hurries closer, “quack-quack-quack,” like an earnest round of Marco-Polo, Mike stretching his shiny duck neck and waddling search of his circle-walking friend, bit by bit, voices easily distinguishable, until they are safely reunited. This drama happens throughout the day all over the farm, but the sweetest thing is watching it play out at sunset. We noticed that almost every night, if the south coop flock has retired to bed without Rick, the calling and fretting is even easier to hear. The trouble is that often Rick is fast asleep somewhere errant, deaf to Mike’s pleas. So either Handsome or I, accompanied by Klaus, scan the farm with a flashlight until we find Rick curled up beneath a cedar tree or within the hydrangeas, sometimes beneath the deck which is wildly troublesome, and then we carry him back to the coop. As Rick arrives safe for bedtime, Mike always loses his mind like a worried parent whose teenager has missed curfew. It is precious.

Snapshot from last winter, the Bathtub Days xoxo
When Rick Astlee makes it all the way to the shade garden on his own, we celebrate!

Meanwhile, Johnny Cash the lone gander has been heart breakingly attached lately. Attached in the neck-swooning, soft-whine-honking, gentle spirit way that MIA used to have with me. He has attached himself alternately to Chanta, our big gold and white paint horse, and Klaus, the world’s most loving German Shepherd. Johnny Cash is Mr. Lonelyheart when he wanders the farm alone, but when he is with his chosen buddy of the moment he could not be happier. Often we find him waddling after Chanta, Chanta’s thick tail swishing at him contentedly. Or we see the goose and his dog resting in the shade of a pine tree, supervising the chickens at scratch. A few days ago I brought Klaus a bowl of water plus a few golden Oreos to share with his friend, and his friend lunged at me, shooing me away from their bro space. Klaus didn’t seem to notice, which is good. Like, extremely good. I cannot think he would approve of any animal attacking his mama, not even his friends.

Out of the blue a few weeks ago, an old adage blew through my mind and settled with more clarity then ever: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” I suppose that most of my life have assumed it meant something like, what’s fair is fair, or maybe what’s good enough for women is good enough men, and vice versa. Like an obtusely framed anti-sexist thing? What have your believed it to mean?

I asked my husband his take on the expression, and he said, “You can’t have a double standard.” Exactly, right? No double standards.

Here a little extra I am putting behind the expression lately: What benefits one of the pair, benefits the pair itself. As if we are two streams feeding into one river, a thorough mix of waters, and the health and quality of each stream constitutes the health and quality of the river. That’s what I’m thinking.

My guy wrote this in the sand for me while on a business trip early in our marriage. xoxo

When we renewed our vows in July, one of the promises I added to our original ones was to remember that my husband is my teammate, not my competition. There’s a lot of private history behind that, and maybe I will share more as we go, but for today’s purposes I am just reflecting on how the better off he is, the better off we are. The happier and healthier I am, the more vibrant our union is.

20 YEARS!!

It’s not earth shattering new wisdom, but it is a timely reminder for me. And since my daily life is so filled with birds and bird behavior, the adage is likely to blow through my mind again and again. I appreciate this nodding wink from the Universe.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, because the goose and the gander are one. Their streams have fed willingly into the same river, and that’s very good. That’s really beautiful. It can be powerful.

In Estes Park a few years ago, before life changed in so many ways. We stayed in a cabin that opened to the river, rushing through snow and ice. Gorgeous!

Thanks for checking in, friends! May you have a buddy as devoted to you as Mike Meyers Lemon is to Rick Astlee, so that on the days your circular wandering leads you far from home at bedtime, that friend calls and calls to you until you are safe again. May you also find an unlikely friend, like our lone gander has found with both a horse and a dog. And if your stream mingles with any other, may all that water be clean and nutritious, with strong currents and sweet flavor.

XOXOXOXO