Lazy W Marie

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

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friday 5 at the farm: short stories

#1. Around lunchtime on Thursday Klaus followed me to the front field, using his sharp puppy teeth to help carry the garden hose, which was already running cold and strong with crystalline well water. We were on a mission to rinse and refill the water trough there, but Chunk-Hi looked so baking hot and dry that our mission quickly changed. I called our sweet buff over to where we stood in the shade, and he mosied then posed for his hose down. His summertime bath. One of his favorite things in the world next to Oreo cookies and having his wooly fur peeled off his rib cage. Klaus watched with great curiosity, or maybe envy, because the pup too loves to be hosed down. As I sprayed first Chunk’s thick black mane and terrible, chipped horns, then his massive neck and shoulders, then his tall, serious backbone, his bath ran down in shiny rivulets looking more like Yoohoo chocolate drink than water. Red clay rinsed off his body and he shook, shook, shook, just like a puppy, until only silver beads remained caught in those dense front locks. I rinsed his split hooves and he turned so I could get his other broad side. He lifted his skinny tail and I sprayed him everywhere he asked me to. Meanwhile Klaus was belly down, long legs splayed out in all four directions of the map, surrendered to the cool dirt beneath that oak tree, our Talking Tree. Roosters chased hens somewhere behind us. A horse snuffled contentedly. And I was so happy to be home.

 

#2. These cookies make me unreasonably happy. They have so much strong bite for munchy, snack-craving teeth and they taste sweet and cinnamony, like apple pie, but they are pretty healthy. Made with largely wholesome ingredients and super filling. Okay, commercial is over. Go make them for yourself!

whole wheat-apple-oatmeal breakfast cookie
whole wheat-apple-oatmeal breakfast cookie

 

#3. Katelyn, Dillon, and I walked downhill toward Wedding Meadow. We were scouting a clearer vision for their ceremony. First our feet swished through the green clover of the middle field, then they crunched through the prairie grass out back. Clouds veiled the morning’s brutal sun and a very welcome cool breeze sliced across our path. The bride and groom chatted happily and measured one thing after another, their easy conversation bringing the natural landscape to life in my mind. Every tree shimmered green and lively into a mirage of white satin and floral drapes, twinkle lights and loving vows. Their date is just two months away, and we are so excited.

Wedding Meadows at sunset...xoxo
Wedding Meadow at sunset…xoxo

 

#4. Miss Red Dot has abandoned her maternal duties wholesale. A few days ago I placed her in the freshly cleaned Hatching Highrise with about two dozen uncollected eggs plus all the materials she would need to make a lovely little home for herself and her foster chicks (hay, grass, and fresh herbs). The first day she did fine. I found evidence of nesting and saw that she was eating scratch and drinking cold water normally. Then the next morning when I opened the front hatch to replace her water and add more grain, she flew out at me violently, in a big storm of wide-eyed panic. I looked at the eggs, scattered now, no longer in their grassy bowl of protection, and also saw that Red Dot had been busy peeling away the double-layer chicken wire we had stapled over one window. In addition to trying to remove it, she had also been trying to evacuate herself through one of those hexagon shapes, stretching and bending it, a feathered prisoner escaping from a tiny Alcatraz. A few of those hexagons were quite baggy already. That’s how you know a hen is unhappy: She risks strangulation trying to escape. Also? I had never before seen a hen successfully remove stapled-in wire mesh. She may not have natural brooding instincts, but she’s also no dummy.

 

#5. Friday morning. We tried to sleep late but Klaus thought that idea was silly. So before 5:30 a.m. on his day off, Handsome leads our little trio outside for Hot Tub Summit. Beach towels and perfect coffee in hand, last night’s moon still glowing blurry and mischievous through the last traces of storm clouds, we creep across the dewy south lawn and welcome the holiday weekend. Our feet leave pearly, lustrous tracks in the green carpet, and the sky is already changing from moody bruised colors to clearer ideas about pink and blue, more summertime cotton candy promises. That little elbow of woodsy garden near the hot tub is our own small Emerald Forest. Deep and dark, dramatic and cool almost any time of day, it boasts bigger leaves and stranger nuances of green than anywhere else on the farm. We brainstorm together about how to spend our day, and the birdsong as we chat is thrilling. Enthusiastic, already turned up to a high volume so that surely no one is sleeping late on this beautiful morning. I soak and smile and press into my heart the gratitude of the moment and also the gratitude of how many prayers have been answered lately. From family needs and relationship healing to professional and financial success, despite big obstacles, we are a very blessed couple and we know it. And the wonder of so much freedom and pleasure is a gift for which I am constantly thankful. We decide we are finished soaking, heated now down to the marrow of our bones, and my husband mock-scolds Klaus for relocating our flip-flops. The foot path home is still visible in the fluffy green, lit now by slanting light from the east. The roosters are awake. The day is ready for us. And we are ready for the day.

 

Happy Independence Day Weekend, friends!
Redeem your freedoms.
XOXOXOXO

this is the true story about Klaus…

Once upon a time there was a farmer who wanted to collect all the animals in the land.

He desired a parrot, a bison, some llamas, cats, horses, iguanas, fish, and more.

He acquired them all, one by one. Sneakily.

But he had a real, grown up job that kept him away from the farm all day, every day.

So his wife stayed home to care for the animals.

And she loved the animals. So much! Really. But they kept her from doing other things.

So she perfected her George Bush impersonation, “Read my lips: No new animals!”

And for a while her husband cooperated. 

In fact they planned to thin the herd a little.

Then one day, quite against her urging, he brought home a new puppy.

And despite herself, like she was under some kind of spell, his wife fell madly in love. Again.

The puppy became more than just another farm animal; he was their baby.

He attached his giant paws to her legs and helped her cook and do chores.

He slept with the hobby farmer and his reluctantly affectionate wife.

And they all lived happily ever after, the man and wife and world’s best pup.

Klaus camo

Klaus big eyes

Klaus bath

Klaus cuddle

Klaus camaro

knlaus day 2

Klaus hair bite

Klaus smile garden

The End.
xoxoxoxo

Hey if you’re visiting from Kat’s link up, welcome to the Lazy W! So glad you are here. Hopefully I have already seen your post but if not, please leave me a note and I will hop on over. Have a lovely day! xoxo ~marie

fast & easy strawberry oatmeal cookies

Hello there! I am back home from my jaw-dropping, deeply inspiring 5 days in Colorado, filled to the brim with love and feeling truly centered. Renewed. Optimistic and proud Mama, too. Yesterday I very much enjoyed getting back to the business of daily farm chores and housework, a side effect of being reminded how great my “job” is. It’s perfect for me, really. One of the pleasures of being home is cooking fresh food in my own quirky, artsy little kitchen, and I’d venture to say that Handsome is glad to have me back here too. xoxo

Speaking of cooking, it’s Tuesday, so how about a quick little recipe? This is the cookie experiment to which I recently alluded and had taken to a book club event. Pretty tasty. See what you think.

strawberry-oatmeal cookies
strawberry-oatmeal cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, browned (two sticks melted in a skillet until lightly brown then cooled a bit)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup plain sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups quick oats
loads and loads of fresh, clean, hulled, chopped strawberries (I used about 2 cups, and that was a LOT for these cookies.)

What I like about this super easy recipe is that it uses produce in season (strawberries) and nothing too fancy. Stuff you most likely have in your kitchen right now. (By the way, you could probably split that butter amount with half shortening, but I hate that. Or, really, I just love butter so much.) This is just an adaptation of plain oatmeal cookies. I had wanted to make them “clean” but didn’t remember to buy the extra ingredients, which are something like honey, coconut flour, and magic. Actually my local grocer was all out of magic that day, so we had to go with good-ole-fashioned sugary cookies. Not mad about it.

Method:

Brown the butter and let it cool. Using an electric hand mixer, cream it together with the sugars. Add the eggs, vanilla, baking soda, and most of the flour. Now you might want a wooden spoon to finish up. With a bit of muscle, stir in the remaining flour and the oats. Then add the strawberries. That’s it!

sc chopped

Scoop the wet dough in heaping Tablespoons onto a cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for up to 10 minutes. Maybe try turning off the oven and allowing them to finish to a golden brown as the oven slowly cools. The strawberries get all intense looking and caramelized, like strawberry leather. And the oats are very nearly nutty. Tenderly crunchy. SOOO good.

I think this day I added a thin little powdered-sugar-and-milk glaze on top, which actually detracted from the cookie. Made them a but too moist. Your call.
I think this day I added a thin little powdered-sugar-and-milk glaze on top, which actually detracted from the cookie. Made them a bit too moist, plus I didn’t quite get all the lumps out. Your call.

Cool on a wire rack like normal. Serve with cold milk or hot tea or, like I did, as part of a ginormous book club feast surrounded by nine of your favorite people.

Side note: Our new pup named Klaus was brand new to the farm the day I made this recipe. Wearing his cute bandanna, he stayed beneath my feet the entire time and slept and slept afterwards. That was just a few of weeks ago, and looking at these photos I am stunned by how much he has grown. STUNNED. He is so big now! Wow. Maybe we should bake something to celebrate his growth spurt. : )

my sous chef...xoxo
my sous chef…xoxo
The cookie business really did him in. He needed hours of cuddles afterwards. I suffered through.
The cookie business really did him in. He needed hours of cuddles afterwards. I suffered through. You know, for his sake. xoxo

I can think of lots of fun variations for this recipe. How about you? Like, add walnuts. Add a white chocolate drizzle. Go that healthy route and try a honey-coconut flour-magic recipe. That is on my kitchen bucket list for sure.

Okay, happy baking friends! And happy everything on this gorgeous, summery Tuesday. I am signing off soon to work in the garden, play with the horses, and generally max out on this amazing life I get to live. Thank you so much for stopping here.

“People have got to learn:
If they don’t have cookies in the cookie jar,
they can’t eat cookies.”
~Suze Orman
XOXOXO

 

 

sketches of day two

Frigid water boiling along the pebble-bottom river bed, the symphony of its journey a constant temptation for me. Drawing me closer, daring me to jump in and swim away. Be carried away. She warns me every chance she gets about the dangers of the water, tossing in branches and flowers to demonstrate the swift kidnapping. Such a sweet maternal role shift. I call her the Mermaid of the Rockies and she holds my hand tight with both of hers while I wade and stretch until my shins are aching from the cold. 

A magpie joined us on the hike, his black and white tuxedo feathers so stark and crisp against the greens, browns, and blues of the lush landscape. He delicately tried to lead us up the side of the mountain, on to adventures we can scarcely imagine, toward the opposite end of wherever the freezing river would have taken us. He is one of a thousand magpies who found us at different points throughout the day, and not just on the hike. And not just on that day. Magpies follow her, and they watch her and have some kind of purpose we are hungry to divine. We call it her spirit animal and wait for more.

The vaulted rock walls impart a feeling of safety. Enclosure. And they pulse outward, a strong heartbeat that almost knocks you down where the forest parts and the view is suddenly unobscured. How the water flows so constantly, the cascading falls sprouting from those sky-high caves, is a thrilling mystery. 

Everything here demands and deserves our attention, both the minuscule details near our feet- the ferny undergrowth, colorful wildflowers, and smaller rocks and mossy boulders- of course the enormous rocky, forested cathedral all around us. The foothills that grow up into sheer cliffs that take our breath away, then the down-tumbling avalanche memorials.  

There’s just so much, and it’s all alive. It all has a very real pulse. So we slow ourselves. Press it all into our skin, our eyes, our hearts and souls. We listen to the birdsong and let it be our soundtrack. We touch the smooth, rough, cold, sun-baked rocks and inhale the unreal natural perfumes. We let ourselves become dry sponges soaking up the extravagance. 

There are not enough words for beautiful.

We ended that very full and happy day at midnight on Trail Ridge Road, in a spectacular grayscale, exploring the highest reaches of the mountain beneath a dazzling, sloping quilt of constellations. Shadows passed beneath us like the behemoths of the watery deep. The air was cold. Cold! And the winds howled overhead and all through our ribs, combing our thoughts and feelings, pulling salty tears right to the surface. The smeary gilded half moon stood guard over this unbelievable scene while we stomped in our sandals and canvas shoes through old snow. Crunching and running in the stuff up to our knees, laughing and freezing ourselves into the purest exhilaration. Stars poured through an unseen funnel toward one mountain peak in particular, and I swear they were moving. Churning magic. 

Do the mountains talk to each other, these ancient companions?

xoxoxo

arriving

On the short flight from Oklahoma City to Denver I read several chapters of Lotus Eaters and have to surgically differentiate the main character Helen from the very similar main character in another book I’m nibbling at, It’s What I Do. (By the way? I can’t wait to tell you about both of these books. Wow.) I eat a couple handfuls of dark-chocolate-almond-cranberry trail mix plus a small red apple and a full liter of cold water. It is nervous, happy eating, because that’s a whole lot of food for me at eight in the morning. Still, something tells me the energy will be well spent throughout the day.

I cannot stop smiling as I make my way from the landed plane to a speedy underground train and then to the baggage carousel and my shuttle rendezvous. Texts with Handsome and my firstborn make my heart soar. 

Just minutes outside the Denver airport I see the landscape is comfortingly familiar to Oklahoma. Patchwork fields and modest farmland dotted with barns and silos. Scrubby prairie grasses, ponds, and even tree rows gone wild with time. It’s all very normal looking until I realize that above all of this, it’s not traces of clouds and sun I’m seeing, but rather snow capped mountains. Nearly halfway up the dome of the cornflower blue sky, I stare at the teasing, white, fragile looking shapes. Just hanging there. Broken silhouettes of the peaks where summer can’t reach, suspended above purple and blue shadows too smooth and quiet to be real. I have to refocus my eyes several times.

More brackish water in my life. Driving on the divided highway through the familiar-feeling terrain toward a brand new place. Closer and closer to my girl, my first baby, and a group of stunning rocks where her own heart has found purchase. Away from my own very real home. The drive is a pleasant mix of the two for a while, and I pray thank you and prepare my heart. Then once more thank you. 

The whispers of the mountain range had been on our left for an hour, just a tenuous suggestion of a foreign land, but now we are turned toward them, facing their immensity, their colors growing sharper with every mile, their heft swelling and gaining a pulse. I catch myself feeling physically sad for the cars driving away. Leaving already? And I catch myself holding my breath.

I see purple wildflowers, five feet tall. A pair of muscular, glossy horses grazing in a field that could be one of our own. A long, thick grove of vaulted trees all leaved out in silver and dancing shamelessly with the very Oklahoma-like wind.

If you are born here, if you grow up with these mountains as your nursery walls, at what age do you first acknowledge their splendor? Then, at what age do you grow bored with them and need reminding? 

Now the feet of the giants are visible. Green and carpeted, knuckled with foothills bigger than anything I’ve so far considered a mountain. More silver trees, this time growing in perfect twin rows, flanking a narrow, unpaved drive, a lot like the great ancient oaks in plantations of the South. I see feathery green grass and every kind of tree, but mostly pine. Cabins or boutique hotels emerging here and there. Generous hidden meadows and colorful wildflowers. This impossibly serpentine road as we climb up up up and my ears pop.

I gasp audibly at the massive boulders spilled out everywhere. Tossed like powerful marbles, great and meaningful, shocking in their size and perfect roundness. Others are deeply gouged and creased by long gone water, and I make a wish that I can maybe carry scars so beautifully. 

Still climbing, still sprialIng upward, I drink in a wide view of nothing but conical Scoth pines. They are stacked in wallpaper rows and layers, greens and grays, a color scale advancing up the mountain that seems to have no top. 

My eyes are greedy for every detail.