Lazy W Marie

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

more new than ever before

I find myself wondering whether this springtime is among the most luscious of all my life or my eyes and heart are simply more open than ever before. Everything feels new, but more than new; everything has a wet, trembling quality, and it feels like more than just the abundance of rainfall.

?

When seeds germinate and break through the topsoil lately, they seem to do so with music playing. When the chicks run across their flight pen, they return the other direction a full size bigger. And have you heard the news that one of our young hens has learned to quack, no doubt by living with two ducks? The skies are probably the same colors as before, but more crystalline, more kinetic. The pine trees are growing arms and fingers and reaching for brand new ideas, learning new languages I think. Walking around the farm, you can smell fresh energy like it’s incense or very good cookies and bread baking.

Old thought patterns are falling apart like charred wood, burned (I believe) by truth. And I can leave them where they fall or sweep them up and replace them with better thoughts, stronger ones, more loving ones, more exciting ideas about life and God and all of our complex human relationships. Fear is almost fully edged out now, and the Worry Door has not cracked open in so long.

A new friend recently loaned me her treasured paperback copy of Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Somehow this author had been completely foreign to me, and now I want time to stop so I can gobble up all of his work, because his term “Christian spirituality” is right on target for my life. Here are a couple of passages that have struck me beautifully this past week:

I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather to have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

I love that. And it speaks straight to me, because I am such a creature of habit. I thrive on not only physical daily routines but also meditative practices, which certainly have value. But when little interruptions ruffle my feathers or when I am so cemented in habits that I am wasting time, it all has a kind of soundproofing effect between God and me. Don’t get me started on excessive volunteering or millions of obligatory social connections.

Okay, and then this:

Passion is tricky, though. because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something.

Somewhere around that sentence in the book, Miller describes his thought process around what he would die for and what he is living for. It’s all kind of the front burner for me now. The moments when we might be asked to die for someone or something may come rarely, if ever, but every hour of every day we are actively or passively exchanging both our time and our life force, our God given human energy for something else. We give ourselves away in pieces, big and small, over and over again, and I wonder how many of those transactions are beneath us, how much of it is waste. A lot, you know? Maybe unintentionally? But so very much is exchanged for good, too, for strong, solid, worthwhile purposes. We trade our time and energy and human life force for love of family and friends, for personal passions that are linked directly to some aspect of our creation that leads us right back to God. How thrilling to see that our intrinsic passions can be connections to God and thereby pipelines for more abundant life. I love that we are all created in such unique ways and that He can draw us near and put us to work based on our passions. I want to find more ways to facilitate exactly that.

So. The farm. All of these nine acres are pure joy to me. The creatures who live here, even when they frustrate me, the plants, the wildness, the work and creativity, our romance and our human fabric, all of it. It has become my home and sanctuary, classroom and temple. And for all of the physical, sensory pleasures here, I know in my bones that the real magic is unseen. The real magic and power and drama can easily be extracted and reinvested elsewhere, should that time ever come. This is just the stage.

?

This is how I know the shimmer and pulse of our current season is owed to more than the mild Oklahoma springtime; God is doing something here with us that brings it all into focus for me. The old fears and worries are burned up and crumbling; worldly distractions are falling back and losing their noisy power in favor of birdsong in the morning and frog symphonies at night. More beauty than I have ever seen is front and center, both for the physical senses and for that part of me that can’t find the words. Hope, joy, belief in the power of Love, compassion for the weird things we all need and chase, patience, silliness, healing. Lots of healing. So much more.

I’ll take the flowers and the vegetables and even the snakes. I’ll take the skies changing and the air tasting like candy, as temporary as it all is. They are outward proof of an unseen Power. For me, this is something worth living for, day after day. Our lives are filled with more goodness than we can manage, despite our efforts to soak it in. And the shifting details just press me to live attentively, to find balance in movement too. It’s all constantly changing and never-ending. Such magic!

Thank you for introducing me to Donald Miller, Stefanie. My mind is churning from it all. Happy weekend, friends. I wish you magic and Love and clear vision.

“You have found the life underneath your life situation.”
~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
XOXOXOXO

read, watch, listen this week

Friends, I have enjoyed some fantastic input lately. From books and online articles and from Netflix to podcasts, the Universe is feeding me mightily. Here are some highlights. I would love to know what you’re soaking up, too!

Kim Swims, a Netflix documentary. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Treadmill miles click by so easily when I am watching anything about an athlete with gobs more endurance than me, and this lady certainly qualifies, wow! Kim Chambers was a ballerina who suffered a traumatic leg injury then discovered a passion for distance swimming and has been setting records since. The program follows her training and recent attempt to swim to a group of shark infested islands about 30 miles off of San Francisco. It teaches a lot about the sport of open water swimming (did you know this is the genesis of the term “Oceans Seven?”) and chronicles Kim’s personal grit and appetite for accomplishment. I loved it. Plus, she is from New Zealand so that entire afternoon after watching her story I walked around the farm speaking to the animals in my best fake Kiwi accent, ha.

Heads up: There is a surprise scene when Kim’s graphic injuries are shown pretty clearly. It was gory and startling. I literally jumped and yelped on the treadmill, ha!

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Miller writes about Christian Spirituality, a genre which I did not know existed, per se, before reading this book, but with which I whole-heartedly identify.

The truths of the Bible were magic, like messages from heaven, like codes, enchanting codes that offered power over life, a sort of power that turned sorrow to joy, hardship to challenge, and trial to opportunity.

In Blue Like Jazz, Miller shares his evolving relationship with God and with “church” and society at large. It’s a kind of spiritual coming of age story. He is simultaneously lofty with his ideas and downright funny. I would describe his writing style as a nice mix of Bob Goff’s affability and C.S Lewis’ seriousness, with some hippie-scented irreverence thrown in. I finished the book last week and keep returning to my notes to soak up certain passages more deeply. My biggest takeaway? Connection. Human connection is vital. We are designed to act as conduits for God’s perfect Love. It is possible, even though we on our own can only love each other imperfectly. Connection, connection, connection. Beautiful stuff!

Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou: I snagged this book (and one other) at a very cool book store in downtown Los Angeles, for about three dollars each.

Easily the most fun book store I have ever visited!
Book sculptures & tunnels everywhere!

I had been hearing about Mom & Me & Mom plenty and thought that reading it near Mother’s Day would be perfect. Man, I really wanted to love it. Maya Angelou has always provided such poetry to her generation, you know? And elegance? But this book was disappointing. I ended up feeling physically ill while progressing through the final chapters, the parts of the author’s life when you might expect relief and redemption to feel really good. Instead of healing, it felt more like glorifying dysfunction. Clearly this review says more about me than it does the book (maybe I have some healing of my own to do), but there it is. I did not enjoy reading it. But I am still glad to have finished it.

I so truly wanted to love this book, but I just didn’t.

Here is what I shared with some Facebook friends. If you have read the book I would treasure your input, whether we agree or not!

It sat uncomfortably with me mostly because she seemed to grow not only more confident (would have been a good thing) but also more… I don’t know. Happy with the dysfunction in her family rather than resilient to it. And her long series of stories celebrated racism and made a joke of violence or the threat of it. I have always lapped up her eloquence and regarded her as someone with wisdom, but after reading this I feel like she has just lorded over people with wealth and controlled people with illusions about her power (not the same as confidence, to me). It all just made me so sad. Enduring a troubled childhood with trauma is actually pretty common. She just did not rise above it with as much love and grace as her reputation always had me believe. I am so sorry if that sounds horrible. It’s just how the memoir impacted me. Her writing was clean and propelling though, so I plowed through it in less than 2 days. She had it pruned back better than I could ever hope to do. And I did plenty of highlighting of beautiful turns of phrase, so I do not mean to diminish her actual writing skills. Just, I guess, her life/character/personality? Ehhh that makes it worse. Sorry.

Oprah’s podcast interview with Tara Westover, author of Educated: I already knew, from my sister Gen and her best friend Julia, some of what to expect from the book itself; but when I struck out for an easy run and hit play on Oprah’s Super Soul podcast, the author’s voice only made me want to read her memoir more. She is young but calm and wise. She is damaged but somehow disconnected from the damage. At once eloquent and pragmatic. She was enthralling. I have since started reading the hardback Gen loaned to me and will report back soon (can scarcely put it down), but in the mean time if you have half an hour or so, give this a listen.

Jess over at Roots and Refuge continues to inspire. Her casual country vegetable gardens and her open-heartedness are just so contagious. And she is admirably knowledgeable, too. Are you following her on You Tube or Instagram yet? I think she has a cult following, judging from her Facebook friends group, but it’s a happy cult. Like, not the kind you need to leave and call your Dad over. Just a cult about creative vegetable gardens with trellis arches and tomatoes and maybe dairy goats. Also lots of sunflowers. A very good cult.

Jess at Roots and Refuge in Arkansas

One more offering from Oprah! She hosts Brene Brown, who speaks on the anatomy of trust. So good, friends. And no kidding, I wept while running slowly and listening to this podcast episode. The story about her (then) third grade daughter and her young friends who had earned or lost her trust, the marble jar, grandparents, all of it, it got me right in my heart in the best way. Since listening to this I have been ruminating plenty over trust, marble jars, and intimate friendships. Good stuff. Love and intimacy built in small moments. Find it and listen! Oh this reminds me to find the study on “sliding door moments” and maybe a Gwenyth Paltrow movie by that title? Are you familiar with either?

Piggybacking by accident, another Brene Brown selection, this time her Netflix special, A Call to Courage: Handsome and I watched it together at the end of a fun, overstuffed Mother’s Day weekend. It has some repeat material if you have followed her for a while; but it has some fresh stuff too and a consistent message about vulnerability and just showing up for life. I bet she and Des Linden would click nicely.

Okay, that’s it for today! I have some yard work to finish before settling in again with Educated. Stories from our Mother’s Day weekend plus a fun recap of my trip to Los Angeles will be posted later this week. What are you reading and watching? Tell me everything!

“I always thought the Bible
was more of a salad thing,
but it isn’t.
It’s a chocolate thing.”
~Donald Miller
XOXOXOXO

an unexpected step towards Chunk-Hi’s wildflower meadow

I have a story to tell you, but as usual, I do not know where it begins, so I’ll start at the end and hop around in the middle for a while and see what happens.

Yesterday Handsome and I enjoyed some rainy-Saturday exploring around town that culminated in stopping at a moving sale just a mile from our farm. We met and became happily acquainted with the property owner, who is not only a collector of cool found objects (my husband kinda wanted some of the Pontiac and shop storage treasures), but also an avid gardener and beekeeper. He gave us a tour of their huge plastic-wrapped hoop house and spoke freely of their two bee colonies.

Were Mike (his name is Mike) and his wife not preparing to relocate to Houston to enjoy full time grand-parent-hood, I suspect we could have become good friends. Or at least good neighbors with lots of hobbies in common. I could have stayed in that bright, humid hoop house for hours, talking about native perennials and natural beekeeping and who knows what else. In the hoop house, while it rained harder and harder outside, he spooned up some volunteer echinaceas, straight form the gravelly floor. You should have seen the wild onion gone to seed, it had to be four feet tall, and snapdragons nearly the same size! Strawberries and mums and kale growing everywhere.

Ok, that’s not the story, but now you have met “Mike.” I bought from his sale a large, heavy, rusted wire basket (it is going to become a fun Easter centerpiece), and he generously gifted me the echinacea starts. Also, some seeds. This brings me, finally, to the story.

In the midst of casual conversation, my husband mentioned where we live (just a mile over), and Mike actually knew our place. As so many people have over the years, he remembered us because of Chunk-Hi the Lazy W bison. Mike said he used to drive past all the time just to see what the buffalo was up to, and eventually he asked us what ever happened to him. As we started talking about Chunk, my nose stung and my eyes watered. This happens from time to time, that someone remembers Chunk but never heard the full story of how he came to live with us and where is he now. Lots of people have seen him or read about him but never met him up close and personal. Still, people seem to feel this familiarity with him. It always hits me in different ways.

We learned that Mike had just retired from a job that occasionally put him in the position to entertain overseas colleagues. Visitors from Bangladesh, the Philippines, and other far away places would travel to Oklahoma, and Mike would drive them past our farm to see the beautiful, tame buffalo exploring freely in natural prairie grass and sand wallows.

This unexpected conversation gave us the opportunity to share a few happy facts and memories about our big sweet boy, and though often this type of exchange is more bitter than sweet, somehow yesterday it felt really good, really sweet.

I love the idea of Chunk’s massive, shaggy head and shoulders, his skinny hips, and his butterfly eyelashes being seen and admired by people from around the globe. I loved the notion of our gentle giant being not only our home state’s mascot but also our little countryside’s goodwill ambassador. No matter that none of us knew it at the time. We did saw him trade love and joy with dozens of people over the years. And we can easily summon those memories for each other.

Mike included in his recounting the fact that our front gate was always closed, or else he might have at any of those visits driven up our driveway to meet us and meet the buffalo, our baby.

So. The wildflower seeds.

As we continued some friendly price negotiations over other estate sale treasures, the three of us traded beekeeping best practices (such a fun topic when people are happy to share with each other, not necessarily inform), which naturally led to talk of flowers and bee foraging. I said that we were in the process of turning the front field where Chunk had lived into a wildflower meadow. Maybe my voice cracked. I saw my husband’s head drop just a bit and realized our nostalgia levels were reaching capacity. Mike turned silently away from our small group, disappearing into an office adjacent to his shop, then reemerged with two heavy bags of wildflower seeds. He handed them to me and asked if I would grow them for the buffalo. I accepted the bags and begged to pay him, but he insisted we take them. “No, just grow them in his memory.”

So. Our inspiration all these months to build a true prairie style meadow, and the slow but stunning progress of nature just beginning to take over the hot, sandy front field (the wild stuff is beautiful right now), are being brought along with this perfect gift from a stranger and instant friend. Someone who loved Chunk from a distance has gifted us up close and personal with seeds for the future. Literally, seeds.

We miss you, Chunk-Hi, our innocent and strong Ambassador of Free Spirit and Good Will. You were magical! You were loved by people everywhere, and your meadow is about to be exceptionally beautiful because of the connections you continue to help us make.

The End.

Or, the beginning of Chunk-Hi’s Memorial Wildflower Meadow.

Thank you, Mike!

“Until one has loved an animal,
a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
~Anatole France
XOXOXOXO

rooted & grounded

And just like that, we have leaped across the verdant threshold between seasons. My heart is filled all over again with excitement for the coming gardens and with hope for so many yet-unanswered prayers. I know I say that a lot, about hope, but please know that we also celebrate the brick-and-mortar resolutions, the answers, the rewards of waiting and hoping, all the time. Our world lately has been riddled with both good news (really good news), encouragement to expect more of it, and some healthy perspective about how much worse life often is for others. Gratitude is not strong enough a word to express how I feel about it all. I am in awe of what God has been doing for us and the people near us.

Jessica planting some joyful color in her apartment courtyard garden…xoxoxo

Seeds are germinating left and right. The Peeps have officially outgrown their indoor trough home and have moved to the flight pen outside. Broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage starts are suddenly voluptuous; their neighboring snow peas are tendriling upwards on arched cattle panels; and the Mouse Garden is a thick, highly textured bed of kale. Kale!! The Yukon Gold potato box has sprouted with food, and what so far looks like just green confetti will very soon be full ruffles of spinach, kale, arugula, and fancy lettuces. Last year’s chicks, now fully mature hens, are laying eggs regularly and eating all the wild clover I can pull from our new watermelon patch. The horses are shedding as thickly as the cottonwood is about to be blooming, and speaking of blooms, all four of our fruit trees seem to have kept their precious springtime flowers and are all set up for a heavy season of apples, peaches, and plums.

The house stays warm enough most days, now, even with the heater off and the windows open, to keep a sourdough starter going, and I bake fresh bread as often as we crave it. We stay busy outdoors so much longer these days, with the gradually later sunsets and mild weather, just moving easily and with great pleasure from one task to the next. Klaus keeps us company the whole time, and it is wonderful to find him exhausted instead of restless at the end of a day well spent. (My husband says he feels the same way about being able to exhaust me, ha! Hibernation is not for everyone.)

Our middle field especially is greening up, and just a moderate effort to scoop up and relocate manure is making a big difference. The compost bins have stayed so full that I recently started a second, much larger area for experimenting with a faster decomposition method. But now I think it’s too far away from a water source. Oh well, the honeybees love it!

My little herb garden is waking up from winter, and it is so fun to try and visualize what will return, where the truly blank spots are, how to reshape and replenish the small area. It’s a luscious intimacy, to know a garden for a length of time, to become familiar with its dimensions and habits and needs and wants. To know how it behaves in each season, what is asks of the gardener, what it offers in return. In the spaces between perennials, I am scattering seeds like cinnamon basil, dill, zinnias, and more. By Easter Sunday everything should be erupting there. Already, in this garden and in the areas flanking the vegetable gate, day-lilies and vinca have returned. I am so excited about the gomphrena and Mexican petunia. For now my eyes feast on the Jane magnolia petals falling all over the front sidewalk.

We have been craving to host an outdoor yoga night and will do this soon. The weather is just so close to being reliable, and we have only a short list of deck repairs to make first. Local and interested in moonlit yoga and meditation? Stay tuned!

The first three months of this gorgeous new year have been filled with incredible Love, satisfying work, plenty of restoration and deep breathing, and just good, plain, happy daily pleasures. Life at the W is not without stress and certainly out hearts have aches like everyone’s; but we have laid hold of some powerful antidotes and some very agreeable reminders for each other about what matters most, about how to shrug off distractions and quickly refuse energy siphons, and how to really sink in and enjoy the moments. Magnify pleasures. Minimize irritations. When either of us buckles from some outside pressure, I think we are pretty good at showing each other grace and welcoming each other back to paradise. Because paradise, really, is how it so often feels. For these things and much more, I am so deeply grateful.

One last update, I just finished The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. My sister Angela had recommended it, and I found it to be not just thought provoking but deeply confirming of so much I have already been considering. Lots to discuss if you have read this!

Happy Sunday, friends, and happy springtime!

Rooted and Grounded in Love
XOXOXO

thursday thoughts (ramblings, whatever)

Nearly halfway through March (my favorite month) and fast approaching the Spring Equinox (coupled with a full moon!), my sentences are forming with an extra dose of Adam Sandler’s Excited Southerner. If I can get through this blog post with decent spelling and at least the fragrance of a coherent message, I will consider it a win. A big one. I hope you will too.

The thing is, the gardens are happening. They are mostly indoors still, on grow trays and beneath heavy all-day mists and grow lights, but a few bits of chlorophyll have found their way to the actual beds. And I can scarcely catch my breath sometimes.

Have you ever wondered whether Eminem and Eckart Tolle are the same person? Have you considered this possibility? Have you ever seen these men in the same place, at the same time? That’s what I thought. Lose Yourself and The Power of Now and all. Okay. I spent four and a half miles analyzing their similarities the other day, and I can debate this.

I am particularly fond of the following spontaneous breakfast. Among so many great meals recently, this one was a winner:

Kodiak waffle, crunchy peanut butter, habanero jelly. YES.

Our llama was screaming the other night. Screaming the way only llamas can, in that trilling, other-worldly, toxic-femininity tone that he has even though he’s a very territorial boy and only a wee bit toxic. Our neighbors heard the screaming and thought we were in distress. They messaged us with such sweet concern. We laughed so hard. The reason Meh was screaming, in case you need to know, was probably the 65 mph wind gusts for which he was holding the horses responsible. He is a loving creature but not a rational one.

Do you know the difference between a farm kitchen’s “chicken bowl” and the “garden compost” bucket? Do you care to know?

Our baby chicks and ducklings are growing like I have never seen before. Rick Astlee (not pictured, but I promise you ok) is especially monstrous. They empty their multiple food and water jars three to four times per day. And they are really loving human cuddles. Pacino (also not pictured), most of the time, is fine with it all. Their constant gentle “peep-peep-peeping” sounds enough like his long-established kissing sound that he probably thinks they are asking for kisses. He asks them, do they wanna wanna wanna kiss, and they peep again. So it’s symbiotic.

This is Muddles, my parents’ adorbs dog. She is the sweetest but I am ever so slightly worried that my Dad loves her more than me. It’s fine. It’s fine, right? I lived here first, Muddles. You weren’t even born yet when I lived here.

Have you watched any of the Netflix special One Strange Rock yet? Oh man. It is so fascinating, so soothing to listen to, and what truly breathtaking photography. We binged it recently and cannot recommend it highly enough. The overview effect as shared by all the astronauts is exactly what we needed to adjust our perspective and feel a wide, heavy quilt of connectedness. Perfect.

Savory Spice Shop on Western wins again!! I popped in for a couple of refills and to greedily accept my birthday freebie, and the nice ladies suggested this Bohemian Forest spice. Delicious! I added it to half of a roasted sweet potato and some asparagus, and I slow roasted some chicken breasts with it too. So nice and earthy and herbal. Yum. Also, it’s sourdough time again! That’s the jar in the background there. It is almost ready and the weekends are about to get really satisfying.

Ok. How was my grammar? Spelling? General coherence? I had to take lots of deep breaths. The sun is down now and we are one day closer to the weekend, to the new season, to more LIFE. Thank you so much for checking in!!

“Focus is the new IQ.”
(Dammit.)
XOXOXOXO