Lazy W Marie

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

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early spring stream of consciousness

Welcome to springtime in my brain! This post will be some kind of hybrid between a concise and unlyrical “Farm Journal Entry” and a long form, better orchestrated blog post.

Spring has sprung. The weather has shifted, the landscape has well and truly emerged from her winter slumber, and the animals are in agreement, as evidenced by shedding horses, hens laying eggs consistently, and cows giving and receiving piggy back rides. Ahem. Even the pollinators are out of hibernation and doing their buzzy, fluttery rounds. I see snakes and lizards almost daily, despite the cool nights.

((peach blossoms))

((rhett and scarletta))

Did you know we have been building a greenhouse? It’s been on our wishlist for many years, but since refitting the little brick cottage for seed starting a few years ago, I had all but forgotten about the idea. One day about a month ago Handsome announced that he had found a guy (there’s always a guy and my guy’s always finding him) with cheap greenhouse panels. So cheap we would be crazy not to scoop ’em up. So scoop we did, and the rest is history. Chalk this up to another project we have had tons of fun doing together, not to mention one of the grandest gestures of love and romance from him to me. The spot we chose for the new little Taj Majal includes a brand new full sun garden space, my first ever believe it or not! All of this deserves a detailed post, which I will write soon. Just know that it is very exciting, and it has occupied a lot of mental and energetic real estate around here all month.

((I call it my little garden chapel))

((year one for the summer garden))

The photo above is the new “Summer Garden” adjacent to the new greenhouse. This is the view from upstairs. Can you see the color difference in a few spots? I have been adding rich, black compost and shredded oak leaves anytime I can scrape out half an hour. In fact, this job might be finished by the time I post this. The space overall has been tilled, because it has never been used for growing before, and we did add topsoil. But that topsoil turned out to be mostly sand and clay, so the amendments are both necessary and fun. I love using what we have, right here at the farm, whenever possible. The pine trees are north, the greenhouse is east, and the food rows will run parallel to those fence lines you see on the left. If you look closely, you can see my favorite vintage glider couch, a gift from my Dad, fortified by Handsome, facing the west. We see the most glorious sunsets here, and I can’t wait to invite frinends to watch them, surrounded by corn and okra and wildflowers. We’ll pick a watermelon and eat it together, right there.

((starberries waking up))

One of our friends recommended the Apple TV series SIlo, but I can’t remember who. We devoured season one, and now I am recommending it to you. Normally to this type of show I say enough already with the apocalyptic stuff. We have all saturated our brains with it, you know? But this is different. There’s a fascinating element of truth supression that to me is worth the insufferable grime and short food supply, etc. Have you watched it? Thank you to whoever suggested we give it a try!

In very different emntertainment news, the current season of Shrinking is chef’s kiss, as the kids say. It has a Ted Lasso quality that makes me feel so good and strong.

On a blustery weather day recently I dove deeply into spring cleaning. Between dusting and scrubbing various negelcted spaces, I took down some heavy drapes in the living room then removed a complicated window treatment in the kitchen (imagine a pleated sheer with six wicker baskets hanging from the curtain rod, all filled with about twenty dry hydrangeas, plus disco balls hanging among them. It was an autumn choice which I do not regret but of which I had grown quite weary). The gluttonous flood of sunlight in both rooms stunned me. I had forgotten how bright the downstairs of our house could be! Now I want to paint some portion of the kitchen yellow and hang crisp white cafe curtains everywhere. Until that decision is made, I am enjoying the light, and Johnny RIngo is enjoying the cooking shows.

((I have since added very different curtains))

Speaking of Johnny Ringo, he remains Klaus’ best friend. They spend the majority of every day together, and it’s the sweetest thing ever. Twice in a week we went outside before daybreak and didn’t find him. Klaus was worried. But when we did our breakfast chores and made it around to the chicken coop, both times we found him there. Somehow Johnny had got shut in with the flock and slept there all night, ha! Also both times, the entire flock was huddled around him in the adjacent duck room, looking like a very creepy seance.

((best buddies))

I had a refreshing thought recently about springtime gardening, and I’ll share it with you in case you also berate yourself for having not yet orchestrated a lush, complex, multi-week spring display of color and texture. You know the kinds of gardens we see, right. and crave? But for the most part those gardens are installed the previous autumn, which is a busy time in a thousand other ways. I have talked to lots of gardening friends who also bemoan the lack of wherewithall in October to plant a garden we won’t see until March or April. Anyway, here is my refreshing thought: Our eyes and our spirits needs far less than we think they do. Nature herself provides so much, without our help. Just sprinkle in a few things here and there, add a little more each year, and call it mission accomplished.

Elsewhere on the farm I do have tulips splashing jellybean color on the sepia landscape and a few fruit trees and hellebores, budding hydrangeas, lilacs, and the first bright green on boxwoods and other shrubs. But this plain little scene, oak leaves and all, gets the point across, to me at least: You need less than you think you do to feel the relief of springtime. A bit of redbud, a forsythia, some daffodils here and there. Not a thousand. Not a perfect grid, either, unless that’s your thing, But for me, in Oklahoma, springtime is all about the vegetable garden. So I am very content feasting my eyes on the easy beauty of everything just waking up. At least for now. : )

((year two for these exciting grapevines))

((the pond is still low and still beautiful))

I trust nature to wake up, but every time she does I am just floored. Every perennial that appears where I had become accustomed to brown, dry earth, amazes me. When the grapevines pushed fresh buds, which then unfurled into fancy green leaves, I just about wept. The blackberries are a miracle, And I have no business collecting such well aged compost after so many months of neglect. I guess I always thought the compost heap needed a lot more complicated attention than it does. But man. We have six out of nine enormous boxes overflowing with the good stuff right now! The pines are candling, the oak trees are dressed in thousands of those chartreuse tassels, and I have a feeling my rose garden will be in bloom for Easter Sunday.

Every day I wake up with so many ideas I have to spend a few minutes consciously focusing my energy. Too much available time can be a problem, but it’s a gift once my energy is focused. I am trying to really cement a few new habits:

  • Be very choosy about what deserves my attention. This means saying no to lots of options.
  • Do something every day that cannot be easily undone, so that I am not living perpetually in maintenance mode.
  • Allow myself to be led by Joy, not fear or stress or guilt or anything else. It matters.

There’s more, friends much more. In the time it took me to upload these photos and write these haphazrd sentences, thirty other beautiful things have happened. And I haven’t even told you what’s going on at the Commish or in our family. Just like in the springtime landscape, energy is building and changes are everywhere. I can’t keep up. And I have no desire to. I am just so happy to be along for the ride.

“The war had invested me with an understanding that life is both
dangerous and fleeting and thus there is no point in denying yourself
adventure while you are still here.”
~Elizabeth Gilbert in Magic City
XOXOXO

hold what ya got

My husband says something that drives me crazy.

Not the… please shut the cabinet door or would you please put your dirty socks away kind of crazy.

(Not that he does those things.)

(I’m just giving you examples.)

More of the… Sleeveless tshirt, backwards ballcap, and stern business voice on work calls kind of crazy.

That kind of crazy that gives me shivvers.

Handsome behind the wheel on a country drive…xoxo

At various crucial times around the farm, he says to me in his deepest, most controlled, most deliciously mellow voice, “Hold what ya got.”

And I almost can’t focus. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I love it, ha!

This past week he said it to me while we wrangled Scarletta Jones into our makeshift squeeze shoot to administer antibiotics. My job was to hold the rope against her strenuous objections and then apply whatever full body tension I could muster onto the steel gates to keep her still. Hold what ya got. He just utters the phrase calmly under his breath, without making eye contact, focused on his side of the task.

Earlier in the week and again yesterday, he said it to me many times while we worked together on our little greenhouse build. He has designed and purchased and organized all of it. Planned every step. He gives me useful-feeling tasks along the way, often amounting to lifting lumber to the sky while he measures some mysterious distance or holding two pieces together while me makes an angle just perfect.

Hold what ya got.

Then inwardly, to myself, Focus, girl!

There are innumerable examples of him casting this atomic spell on me. He’s been saying it for years, and I only recently intimated how it affects me. He doesn’t get it. But that makes it worse. Or better.

I suppose he’ll keep saying it forever. I hope he does.

And I absolutely will.
XOXOXO

snowmelt & hope for change

All week we been shivering and hiding ourselves away in near-zero temps, shrouded in snow and ice. Dark, moody skies. Until today.

Today, the sun reappeared. It started with a raw, rusty edge in the east, a quiet daybreak already more promising than the previous few. And although the morning was still frigid, still just four dergrees Farenheit, the brightness made it bearable. Then the sun rose fully and the sky turned from silver-grey to true blue, and I got very excited.

By lunchtime, sunlight was bouncing off of every surface, really truly streaming through the windows. I caught glossy reflections of water here and there. I saw drips, too. Wait, water? The ice is melting! I looked through a window in the Apartment and saw that the middle field, solid white just a few hours ago, was suddenly half mud. The pine trees were suddenly relieved of their snowy burdens, too, and the horses’ manes looked dry. Everything was bright and saturated with color. I ran downstairs to grab a light jacket to go play outside, and when I opened the door the cold nearly took my breath away. I folded in half and shut the door. It was still only around ten degrees, ha! Still frigid cold, even with the evidence of melt.

((snow day in January with Klaus, Max, Sadie, and Charlie!!))

So I bundled up properly this time and invited Klaus on a walk. He loves the cold. We checked on all the animals, distributed carrots to the horses and extra biscuits to the cows, made a bouncy loop around the back field, and caught Johnny Ringo on our way back uphill. When we passed the Batmobile and walked to get the mail, I started thinking about the sunlight and low temps and how we can enjoy a thaw even before we approach thirty two degrees. The concentration of light, I suppose, is pretty powerful.

You must already know where I’m going with this, if you’ve been here very long.

A little bit of weak sunlight, at low angles, is no match for ice in low temperatures.

But strong, abundant, uninterrupted rays of light, concentrated, directed energy, maybe bouncing off of surrounding walls and objects, can absolutely melt ice, even in low temperatures. That’s amazing.

I’m taking this as a reminder that focused attention can make all the difference in our work. That prayer can change things, if it is strong and focused. Abundant.

Maybe I’ve been playing a few things too softly, just casting my energy and attention vaguely where more focus is needed to accomplish something. Praying only in background ways, saying I trust God, when something more fervent is required. Pursuing a few worthy goals too lightly.

Maybe it was just a really beautiful, snowy day with a really beautiful, melty surprise tucked in. Maybe it was just nature doing her thing. But I can’t help but see the message and the promise:

If you focus your energy better, things will change.
XOXOXO

a charlie and rhett story

Read this short story in your best Rod Serling voice:

Imagine if you will, a ten degree morning on an ice covered farm. The sun is brilliant, bouncing wide, metallic sheets of light off of every surface. The wind is mercifully nonexistent.

Everywhere you look is a snow dusted pine tree or a pile of oak leaves, crunchy and frosted and as still as a sculpture. Chickens are clucking, a goose is skronking, and horses are whinnying their demands for breakfast.

Now you see a happy and energetic Puppy following his giant best friend German Shepherd during morning chores. They are flipping like fish and bounding across the weather stiffened tundra. Their claws mostly grip the ice, but not always. Still, they run and chase and beg the Lady to play fetch and keepaway with a frozen softball. When the Lady throws it, the puppy runs with absolute abandon, no thought given to its trajectory or obstacles or ice or anything.

The Lady is not great at throwing. The Puppy has not learned this yet.

The softball lands on this side of a wire fence, in the vicinity of a young steer, his face buried in a pile of soft hay. The puppy is exactly one second behind the ball. He hits his brakes. His claws fail. He skids on his bottom, pliable young puppy legs splayed, toward the ice dusted Thing With Horns. Thankfully, the fence is between them, but still they bump, giant face to small body, and the Thing With Horns emits the deepest, most baritone objection the puppy has ever heard. A rare sound, it startles the Lady too.

The Puppy regroups, retreats to the Lady without the prize, and checks over his shoulder to see that the fence is still in place. Fetch and Keepaway continue but not without some anxiety.

The End.

space to feel my feelings about Joc

My energy has been stalled for a few hours. I thought surely it was just from this spell of cold, dark weather. Or maybe from having a list of important but not very challenging tasks to finish today. Or maybe it’s the ambiguity of not being on a training plan right now. Some days I embrace my freedom and really squeeze a lot out of it. Other days, when I am low on motivation, the great openness is unnerving. I feel unmoored. Whether with fitness goals or caring for the farm or writing or anything, too much blank space can, well, stall me out. I guess I need to reestablish some structure, I think to myself, fill the calendar back up. Train for another marathon.

Then I noticed two prevailing trains of thought, both about Jocelyn.

One has surfaced almost every time lately when I get on the floor to cuddle Klaus, nearly every time we play outside: I am keenly aware that Jocelyn’s dog, Bridget, was a puppy when Klaus was a puppy. They were well acquainted then and even sometimes “corresponded” through the mail, when she and Joc first lived in Colorado. I see Klaus’ silver whiskers and ample belly, hear his gentlemanly groans and notice how his energy is so different now than it was nine years ago, and I cannot help but wonder what Bridget looks like now, how her energy is, what middle age looks like on such a strong and adventurous little woman. These are bittersweet imaginations, and I think maybe I can tilt that scale away from bitter, to mostly sweet. Maybe I can willfully conjure up how the reunion will soon look and feel. Bridget running in the grass towards us, no doubt carrying a rock for someone to throw. Retrieving rocks was once her favorite thing next to chasing bears off their cabin porch and stampeding behind deer up the mountain.

The second prevailing thought is much darker. I have been trying to silence a voice in my head that says, “She’s just not coming home. It’s been too long.” And I have no idea what to do with this, because it won’t stop. Hourly, at odd intervals, it just echoes. The actual words, typed out and spoken silenty in my head, are cruel enough. I don’t have to hear them to recoil. It makes me physically nauseated.

When people ask me if I have heard from her, the truth is awful. I have not. I sometimes hear updates about her, not from her. But I do appreciate hearing her name spoken. When noone asks, that hurts too. But I kind of understand why they don’t want to bring it up. When I see photos of her on my phone or her artwork around the farm, or even when I care for the horses she once loved so much, my god. Everything hurts so much. Sometimes it all serves to keep her “with us,” but right now it is terrifying. And complaining about this pain when so many people have lost their children forever, in undeniable and truly hopeless ways, feels so self indulgent and ridculous.

I still do have hope. Right?

Maybe these are just the emotions I have successfully avoided in all the previous months and years of being extremely busy and overcommitted. I probably was staying busy to not have to feel it all. Maybe this short season of loose schedules and low commitments have simply given my heart some space to unfold. Maybe this is what I have been feeling for a really long time, in other words, and none of it is a signal to any new and terrible thing happening. It’s not a prophetic warning, which is something else I fear; it’s just an emotional landscape finally visible because I have cleared some distractions. Is this a true psychological phenomenon, or have I invented it to make myself feel better? Does anyone know?

I tell myself again that this is just a season. A test. That one day we will be celebrating again, just as we have so many times already! And in that bright future, I will be ashamed to look back at any point before when I had given up hope (which is impossible to do with your children, actually) or indulged in sadness. So today, I’ll finish some work worth doing and get some exercise. I’ll bend some deliberate thought toward good things coming soon. And, because this feels like an instructive moment, I’ll be honest with myself about how I’m really doing: Not great. This is hard.

I love you so much, Joc. Nothing can change that.
I dream of you almost every night, and I talk to you all day, every day,
so much so, that I often trick myself into thinking you’re just across town
and could surprise me at the front door any minute.
I hope you are happy and being loved fully.
I hope you know that we are still here,
still loving and missing you.
XOXO