Lazy W Marie

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

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marigold has wounded me deeply

This morning at first breakfast, Little Lady Marigold displayed a startling level of steadiness and composure. A tiny little stone colored frog had been perched on the edge of her bowl, and when I filled it with molasses scented grain, the frog jumped right up to her left shoulder. It landed in the deep, stressed-out tuft of her greyish fleece, and she did not even budge. For a sheep who still won’t let me cuddle her, she allows an amphibian passenger?? Gross.

Speaking of gross, the cats are still nursing. They seem content with jeans edges and such, but wow. How much longer can we expect this behavior?

Handsome was thankfully able to extend his staycation by a couple of days. It is not only needed; it is really needed. So we are relaxing a little extra today and tomorrow, expecting to resume daytime remote office duties early Wednesday morning. I skimmed an online article about how people are designing their work-from-home office spaces, and I really want him to ask me to do this for him, ha. It’s unlikely to happen, though, if only because he loves to work from either of his car shops. He takes advantage of every spare minute to either tinker with his fun cars or make progress on the Batmobile, and I totally get that. Are you following his Batmobile photos yet?

Today is Quarantine Day 128. We are enjoying some New Moon energy, and our late July weather could not be more luxurious. The first day of autumn (September 22nd) is a bright and glossy 64 days away, and our first average frost date is at least 101 days away. Probably more. These facts help me breathe deeply, like I am buffered by a wide, velvet greenbelt of summertime. I feel so lucky to live in Oklahoma, where the growing season is not only long but also multi-faceted. It gives us lots of choices and keeps us guessing. We have first spring, second spring, early summer, late summer, at least three autumns, and maybe an Indian summer too.

Jess has been working lots of overtime at the hospital and has scheduled her corresponding days off all together, rather than staggered like usual. It will look and feel like a nice vacation, but she will leave her vacation time untouched. Genius! We are excited for her to get some much needed rest, and we are really excited that she will spend part of her time off here at the farm. I have said it before with Jocelyn, and it is still true: Preparing a guest room for your adult kids before they visit is at least as much fun as preparing the nursery before going to the hospital. And that is saying a lot.

We are working on some fun projects for the upcoming school year, so stay tuned! And happy fresh new week, friends! Thanks as always for reading and for sending me your thoughts. I love hearing from you.

“Then tell me of your long journey home.”
~Cold Mountain
XOXOXOXO

in a continuum, where does the story begin?

“The good news is that the heat seems to be exhausting our five million grasshoppers. Wait, let me back up…”

I was around nine years old, barefoot and in the middle branches of Mom’s mulberry tree, right there on the west edge of the house against our neighbors’ driveway. My hands were stained black with the wonderful inky juice, my skin brown from summertime and my hair probably tangled in the back. I was worried that something deep and important was wrong with me because I could never figure out the correct beginning of any story. I was fundamentally flawed, though I didn’t know the word fundamental yet.

I marveled at how people could just dive in and tell any story fluidly, discerning with confidence how to begin the tale and what details to include. To me, to my nonstop thoughts and conveyor belt lines of questioning, every beginning was really just the middle or end of something else, everything was very literally connected. Nothing, not even in fiction books, had a believable and well formed boundary.

It’s why I still have trouble telling stories. I never know where to start. What history can be excluded, can just be trimmed away as if it didn’t happen, as if it doesn’t matter any more.

What details matter not just to me, but also to the listener or reader? What details would be missed, if I attempted some economy? What precious context supplies the understanding that makes all the difference?

Nothing happens in a vacuum, and no man is an island. We all affect each other, and we are all affected by each other. That’s not a flaw; it’s part of our wonderful design.

As for how you tell me stories, tell me everything. Leave nothing out. I want to hear it all, even if it barely seems relevant. I want to understand the background stories, the moods and flavors, the weird implications, the spider webs of complicated stories that led up this exact moment.

The grasshoppers are numerous, but they are slowing under the weight of Oklahoma summertime. And the tomatoes are thriving. Tonight we ate a pretty delicious galette made with a few of those tomatoes plus fresh garden basil and a parmesean-cornmeal crust.

And we sat with and loved on our friends whose story is changing. Not suddenly, and not in a vacuum. I do not grasp where it begins, really, and maybe they don’t either. Tonight, though, we have this part of it, of this one part of a big and complicated story that is far from over. This moment in a continuum, this chance to do the next right thing.

I very much wish that someone would have told me, at nine, barefoot in that mulberry tree, that it’s ok to not know where a story begins. No one knows. We just get to dive in right where we are and pour ourselves out lavishly.

“You never know how hard it will be.
You never know when it will end.
You can’t control it.
You can only adjust. And, he added,
No one gets through it on their own.“
~Angel, Born to Run, Christopher McDougall

some very good input

The following podcast episode caught my attention with the title, “Are We Wrong About Bio Mechanics?” because I love learning all about the human body. But the content was an even more luscious surprise. The guest author spoke passionately and convincingly about fluidity and joyful movement, about remembering to think of our physical selves as collections and intersections of space and light, and about quantum physics. He described how babies move without regard for how they should move and just take joy in how they can move. He invited the listener to discover ways of moving in space with natural anti-gravity (buoyancy!) and with a freedom of spirit. I am paraphrasing here because I listened to this while running, and I definitely missed some detail. But it was so good I plan to listen again with a pen and notebook handy. Click here: https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=53881087&refid=asa

Although I finished Cold Mountain a few days ago, it won’t leave me. The story is big and historical, the setting and scenery beautiful despite being war torn, and the characters felt so real that despite a crisp and powerful epilogue I crave more of them. Ada and Ruby, especially, validate every yearning I have for our nine acres. So industrious! During my big downstairs artwork rearrange, I moved a small framed painting of a mountainside cabin to one of my kitchen walls. I want to see it often and conjure up the novel’s thrumming vibrations of reasonable struggle, resourcefulness, natural rhythms, and the beauty of creative labor. I want to think of friends living together.

“The main thing, Ruby said, was not to get ahead of yourself. Go at a rhythm that could be sustained on and on. Do just as much as you could do and still be able to get up and do it tomorrow. No more, no less.” ~Frazier

A well respected Oklahoma physician shared his thoughts on the mask debate in this letter to the governor. The government’s mandates or absence of mandates is one thing; the colossal accumulation of all citizens making good, wise, loving personal choices day after day is what will turn the virus’ tide in Oklahoma, and everywhere. Cellular level wisdom, this is what we need. https://nondoc.com/2020/07/18/letter-if-the-governor-wont-enforce-a-mask-requirement-the-task-falls-to-citizens/

Are you watching the new season of Yellowstone? Oh man. Much to say. Much. Many words.

“Just lose yourself in the work.”

Yesterday I cracked open Born to Run, a book I have been wanting to read for months. It chronicles the Tarahumara, a niche and extremely remote running tribe in the mountains of Mexico, and in just a few chapters I am hooked. My brother Joey read it a couple of months ago and warned me not to read it because it will make me want to run an ultra, ha! Then my foot doctor referenced it while we discussed unique physiology and barefoot running. All of this, then today i heard that gorgoeous, lilting message about fluid movement. Magic!

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

“There’s something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we’re scared, we run when we’re ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.” Also, “In terms of stress relief and sensual pleasure, running is what you have in your life before you have sex.”

One last thing, may I suggest as a perfect summertime meal a scoop of shrimp ceviche with cold watermelon and some salty tortilla chips? Okay. Not exactly foraged from the prairie, but delicious.

Seize the day, friend. Nourish yourself.

XOXOXOXO

all’s well that ends well

Today, on day 135 of covid quarantine and day 7 of anniversary staycation, we awoke to a major plumbing leak. Obviously this changed all of our fun plans for Friday morning, but we are vividly grateful to have pinpointed the leak behind the downstairs bathroom, accessed it with only moderate wall deconstruction, and repaired it without calling for outside professional help. Also with just one trip to the hardware store, whew! Winning.

After regrouping midday, baking was in order. I made this Greek yogurt cake from Sandy’s blog (hers is one of my favorite spaces on the internet, truly). I swapped the strawberries for blackberries from my garden and added shredded coconut. It’s delicious!

Since this isn’t quite my husband’s kind of treat, he got his very own weekend batch of cookies made with chopped up Hershey’s bars, not semi sweet chips, and zero nuts or oatmeal. His life has been hard enough this week to have to deal with such nonsense ingredients, ha.

This evening we will gather at my childhood home in the City to say farewell to Halee, Greg, and Connor. In a few days they will join my brother Joey in Spain for what will likely be their little family’s final U.S. Navy chapter. We are so excited for them!! And as weird as the last few months have been thanks to patchy quarantining and iffy health conditions for several family members, we are thrilled to have spent so many quality days and nights together, making summertime memories. Our family is big and energetic and sometines unwieldy, but man do we know how to love each other! My friend Mickey, after hearing so many of my fun family stories, once observed that I “come from a long line of effort.” And that might be one of the best compliments we could receive.

One of the ritials Handsome and I keep in our marriage is the issuing and redemption of fun coupons. We do this at birthdays, on vacations, in the doldrums of winter to spice things up, etc. Obviously, we created some this week, with the intention of using them by Sunday night. But after losing almost all of today to plumbing drama and two days earlier this week to electrical repairs, we are extending the coupon redemption deadlines until next Tuesday evening. This is a correct decision.

I just finished Cold Mountain and just started reading Born to Run. These books could not be more different except in their common ability to make me crave to do all the things except sit still.

What’s new in your world? How are you spending these summer days and humid nights? Any good recipes I should try, books worth readi ng, or ideas to ruminate?

Thanks for checking in, friends, hope to see you again tomorrow!

XOXOXOXO

six quick thoughts

ONE: May we never forget that we started our 20th year of marriage in the year 2020, in the midst of a pandemic. This is an unforgettable season, and it is just the beginning!

TWO: People without unprofitable, chaotic hobby farms, what do you do with all of your free time and extra cash?

THREE: You know you are hard baked into rural living when you decline to enter a chicken coop, or even walk down certain paths known to produce certain stickers, because you’re wearing your “nice” flip flops. Same goes for your “going out” tank top and shorts. Also, it’s all one outfit.

FOUR: Apparently one of my favorite past times in life is wooing a stand-offish animal, coaxing it to gradually trust me and come willingly to my open arms, then decide it’s very annoying to have so much attention every day. “Seriously could you let me hang this wet laundry in peace, pleeeaaase?”

FIVE: Most often the worst injuries we suffer from wasps is not being stung but rather all of the pseudo-violent, evasive acrobatics we perform trying to avoid being stung. True story: My great grandpa Neiberding (the beekeeper who, according to legend, kept an alligator in his basement) once broke his own arm doing this. It happened against an open pickup truck window.

SIX: It’s good and magical to skip pesticides and herbicides for the sake of the pollinators and for the health of the planet at large. We do it! But you’re gonna have extra weeds to pull (chickens love these) and plenty of extra pests like grasshoppers and vine borers. The healthier your local environment, your own little ecosystem, the more frogs and lizards you will have. They help with the bugs. But they also attract snakes. These are all facts.

daily harvest, eggs already in the fridge xoxo

Thanks for checking in, friends!! How was your Thursday? What random thoughts can you share with me?

XOXOXOXO