Lazy W Marie

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

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Sea Monkey Conception

   It was Wednesday afternoon. The farm was clean and quiet, and nothing on the schedule threatened interruption. The water tank had been prepared, and the time was right.

   So I lit a few candles and pressed play on my favorite love songs album, thinking Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman singing Come What May from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack would be a good beginning for such a risky venture.
   I ripped open the square paper packet of instant live eggs and tenderly peppered them into the distilled, treated water. Someone in the other room started playing a weepy violin, which is weird because nobody else was here and no one I know plays the violin. Was that an omen?
   The eggs fell like glitter through the water. I covered the little plastic tank with my favorite cotton tea towel, the one with owls on it, thinking maybe the image of a fierce predator will help ensure the Sea Monekys’ safety.
   A quiet, trepidatious beginning to be sure. But a beginning nonetheless.

Five Senses Tour, Winter’s Beginning

    What a wonderful week we’re enjoying. Not without its stressors and mysteries, of course, but there’s some love or magic or something in the air. I have learned to slow things down even more when life is like this. Wishing you a big, nourishing dose of this peace. Here is my little detour on Monica’s 5 Senses Tour.

See: The beginnings of Christmas decorations in our home and the end of the colorful leaf parade on our property. 
This is possibly my favorite inspiration photo so far.
I have resolved to not buy anything new this year, 
to just use what we have plus maybe 
a few items from the produce department.
Hear: Our parrot practicing new words, our guinea fowl debating creationism with the geese, lots of Soundgarden on the radio today, and an excellent playlist of Cajun music while I write.
Taste: Really good, strong, fresh, piping hot coffee with real sugar and cream in it. Big surprise, I know.
Touch: Perfectly fresh, clean, cool, pressed sheets on our bed and then Handsome’s face shaved just as smoothly, between those sheets.
Read: Still nibbling at the same book, which is picking up speed as the narrator’s love affairs do the same.
Think: I have been simmering a lot about the environments we create and allow for ourselves, the deliberance with which we live each day and the conscious will we apply to life and relationships.

I found this, like so many other great images, on Pinterest.
I believe this is the original source.
Feel: Overflowing optimism, faith, hope, excitement, suspense, secret joy, gratitude ahead of time… However you might label this ribs-deep emotion that everything is going to be alright, that miracles are in the air, that’s how I feel this week.

My sweet chickens are several years older now than in this photo,
but I’ve been gazing at this image for over a week.
And when I spoke to them a couple of nights ago
their voices were as young and clear and happy as they were on this day.
This is a huge, welcome blessing in our home.

Be Sensual. That’s how you were created…
xoxoxoxo

5 senses tour

Sea Monkeys

   Over the weekend, as part of a short family trip to Woodward, Oklahoma,  Handsome and I spent about an hour in Atwoods with his brother and sister-in-law and one of their sons. Do you have an Atwoods in your corner of the world? It’s a retail store found almost exclusively in rural areas, and though they are expanding their product base they mostly sell great stuff for, well, country people. You know, large quantities of deer corn and gun safes and stuff. And John Deere tractor accessories and sparkly belts and baby chicks in the springtime. And pearl-snap button up shirts and live animals traps and ammo.
    And candy and toys and home decor.
    We cruised the candy aisles and collected all the oldest, funnest sugary teats that we could justify with childhood memories. They sell the paper-bagged treats like clove gum, cherry sours, and horehound candy sticks. 
    Yep. That’s for our parents’ generation.
   They also sell plain cellophane bags of those spongy pale orange circus peanuts. And Boston baked beans. And maple thingies. We loaded up on something for everyone and had a grand ole time doing it, as much fun exploring the candy aisles as we did eating the candy itself.
   We also bought a rusty tin star for the house, something that should look good all year long but is a perfect gift to ourselves right after Thanksgiving, when the Christmas decorating is about to ensue. Then we each bought a toy. 
    For ourselves. Because we’re mature, responsible adults.
   Handsome selected a plastic miniature farm scene that includes a modern windmill, not one of the more familiar paddle/tripod windmills we all associate with black and white movies and drives through Kansas on the way to Oz. The new kind. The tall, elegant, white giants that now perforate the Oklahoma landscape sending clean energy to tens of thousands of homes. More on that soon; it’s a big topic.
    For my personal early Christmas toy gift I selected Sea Monkeys. 
   Sea Monkeys were a frequent indulgence for me in childhood, the only mass marketed item I might have purchased or received as a gift more often than Lee press-on nails. Now, the little aquatic babies never really lived that long under my care, hence the frequent purchases. But my grief over the repeated loss could apparently be assuaged by another little plastic tank of Sea Monkeys.
   Maybe I have always been destined to have a farm full of animals, or maybe this mild obsession was an early signal to my dangerous penchant for  optimism. Either way, when I saw the neatly arranged rows of Sea Monkey tanks for sale in Atwoods, all of that weird maternal-slash-Island-of-Dr. Moureau stuff came bubbling to the surface.
   My most difficult decision was no longer what toy to buy but rather what color of Sea Monkey tank to take home. I chose the purple one. Purple is the color of creativity, you know.
   Today I started my kit. If you have raised Sea Monkeys before then you know there is a process and a schedule. Please say the word schedule with me in the elegant European way, “she-shu-ill.” Many thanks.

   Tomorrow midday I will add the “Instant Live Eggs.” This Friday will be the little critters’ first official feeding! They will become the only Lazy W residents whose diet does not support and fund our local feed store owners and their beautiful family. I predict Pacino will be jealous of the attention I am likely to pour over my new babies,  but he’s a tough bird. He’ll get over it eventually.

   I’m taking the Sea Monkeys seriously this time, folks. I am a grown up now, as mentioned above. Since my last foray into this treacherous world of care taking I have successfully nurtured formula-fed baby buffalo, helped with the castration of two very spirited colts, napped on the belly of a horse, and been loved by a goose though hated by a rooster. Surely this new brine shrimp experience will come with a deeper well of skill and wisdom.
   No need to wish me good luck; I think we’ve got it covered.

   Wait, please do wish me good luck after all. This is terrifying.

Love your animals, great and small!
“The Lord God Made Them All”
xoxoxo

I Like to Eat my Turkey from a Big Brown Shoe

   For days now, strong ideas and long strings of words have been swirling delightfully through my mind and body. I have slept soundly every night and woken up refreshed every morning, already surrounded at dawn by the warm winds and bright colors of philosophy and possibility. In every corner of my house I have been ferreting away notebooks and slips of paper scribbled up with eurekas and scriptures that have never felt so real before, with observations about the universe at large, questions posed about conflicting ideas, recipes that feel important to me and so surely I must share them, and overly edited photos that tell long, interesting stories (at least to us).

I found this on Pinterest. You. Are. Welcome.

   But I haven’t taken the time to write this week because things have really been hopping around the farm, precluding me from focusing on any one idea and polishing it into something presentable. 
   We have had a large predator here (probably a bobcat or cougar but almost definitely not Sasquatch) and sadly have lost our Tom turkey, a pair of guineas, and at least one rooster. This means that now all the birds, cranky geese included, have been penned up 24/7 for their safety. This means that they are restless and extra noisy, but in a far removed way. This means that I desperately miss them walking around the yards and gardens. Their soundtrack and fluttering presence are both features of daily life I have come to need. This means that I now spend an extra amount of time in the chicken coop every day talking to them, petting them, and generally listening to them. 
   I have also been fortunate to receive several Green Goose orders this past week, so a chunk of every day is spent sewing. This means that my sewing room looks like an F-5 tornado hit. Thank goodness I have not yet acted on the impulse to replace the solid door up there with a windowed farm house door that is partly wrapped in chicken wire, because nobody needs to walk down the hallway and see that chaos.
   Thanksgiving is tomorrow, of course, so I have been following a torrid series of cleaning chores, rearranging impulses, table settings, cooking, and extra cardio, lest we arrive at the first of December having taken two steps back instead of one more forward. Speaking of stepping forward, I kept to my goal of not buying anything at all new for autumn decorating. Except for two things. But these baby pumpkins were grown here, which pleases my soul. 

   The big animals are all busy growing their winter coats, too. This requires me to touch them a lot more than normal and inhale them deeply, up close and personal.. These are important and time consuming tasks, you guys, and they’re further reasons why I haven’t been writing.

   
   Below is a glimpse of the Thankful Tree which I will be forcing my guests to decorate soon. We will write on paper leaves the things for which we are thankful and hang those leaves on this branch. Friends and family will either love it or hate it. Okay, I will love it and they will love it a LOT. By the way, I have been getting lots of emails from PW begging me for photography advice, because clearly I have mad lens skills, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. She’ll be fine.
   But the main reason why I’ve not been writing much is just sheer, perfect, mind numbing shock that People magazine has yet again selected the wrong man for their annual crowning of “Sexiest Man Alive.” Bradley Cooper? Not disgusting. But also not sexier than this guy…
   And he has so many incarnations…

   When will we resist the mainstream? 
   Anyway,  there’s a lot going on. I am so happy to be on the brink of Holiday Season 2011. Good things are happening. Love is stronger than ever. Hope is rising and building just like we need it to. 
Wishing you and yours all of your favorite dishes and twice as many blessings!
Happy Thanksgiving from the Lazy W
xoxoxo

Slow, Beautiful Decay

   I luxuriated with some time in the flower bed today and noticed even further advancement into dormancy. The changes happen so gradually, yet so suddenly, that it is easy not to see every colorful, textural stage of the season.

   After the abundant sunshine, the first thing that is apparent is how many leaves have fallen and how much of the crunchy stuff has accumulated in the corners of the farm, mostly against the buildings and fences.
   Then there are the brilliant colors. Brick red, true gold, bronze, mustard yellow, crimson, and brown, every shade of brown. Nearly every leaf has surrendered its green now. Only a few waxy stems remain here and there, but they were probably frozen that color and will soon be kneeling to winter’s authority.

   The second chance tomatoes are stubbornly offering up their remaining fruits, but those fruits are blistered and burnt now from our cold nights. I am having a hard time pulling up these dead lovelies, after all they’ve endured this year. It seems overly brutal of me to insist they have reached their end. Maybe if I leave them all winter we’ll enjoy reseeded babies next Easter. Those are always stronger, by the way, in case you didn’t know.

   I watered everything today while the sun was warm and the soil receptive. We have a few more cold nights forecasted, and Mom & Grandpa have always said that you should water deeply right before a freeze. The idea is that the water will soak down and freeze around the root systems, forming protective insulation against the harsher freezes soon to come. Then in the springtime, of course, the buried ice melts at a snail’s pace, giving each plant that deep, slow kiss it needs right as it’s waking up…

   Cannas are as striking in dormancy as they are at the height of a tropical summer., I love the structure of their big leaves, the fuzzy seed pods, and the rusty colors. I never cut them down until new growth emerges in the late spring. Often winter does it for me, though, and the fodder makes excellent mulch.

   Speaking of pruning, I also delay cutting anything healthy off of the rose bushes until maybe February. Borrowed garden wisdom says to let the sap slip all the way out of the branches before cutting, which takes the entire winter. So unless you see something truly diseased or so badly tangled with another branch that it needs to be removed, let it stay for now. Make like McCartney and Let it Be.

   The pansies I planted earlier this autumn have all doubled in size. And they are so fragrant. Of course you have to be pretty near the earth to smell them, but what a treat! Don’t you love the fragrance of wet earth mixed with that peppery, sweet smell of petals? So nice and clean. Better than Scentsy even.

   The mums all seem ready to trade their first round of blooms for another, but I am not ready to snip anybody’s head off quite yet. I adore the colors of straw and burlap all around me.

 Delay, delay, delay…have I found reasons to delay, or am I delaying for good reasons? I think the former is truest. Any way I can keep from busying myself right now allows for more wandering, more touching, more dreaming, especially in the garden where God does His quietest work and where I find the most miracles.
Enjoy the changes around you…
xoxoxo