Lazy W Marie

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

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Marathon Monday: a Happy Detour

Happy Marathon Monday! How are you? I have a quick running update (more for my own records) and some amazing news. Some encouragement for you to never stop praying for things that matter.

I finished Hal Higdon training week 8 with mixed feelings. With a total mileage goal of 26 for last week, I only ran 18. But those 18 miles I did run were gobbled up like candy, and I had tons of energy still in my legs! I started early in the week with a couple of short runs and enjoyed my first ever 8 mile “Laps of Eternity” run here at the farm. That is a heckuva lot of repetition, you guys. 32 times around the rectangular sandy back field. Even the llamas got bored of watching me. But I have to say it felt wonderful. I was on cloud nine after that run! My plan then was to round out the week with a 14 mile run at Lake Draper with the South Oklahoma City running club and the Landrunners. I was super excited! The weather has been drop dead gorgeous. Our schedule was just right. I had the strength and energy to spare. Check, check, check.

Then everything changed and our weekend was nothing like what we had planned. Because a prayer was answered.

My girls were both at the farm for the entire weekend. Both of them, at the same time, from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon! This is such a big deal. If you are close friends of ours then you know how nervous, giddy, and deep down thankful I was.

My oldest daughter used to run cross country and is among other wonderful things a talented athlete, so I invited her to join me on the the long run. It turns out she prefers sprinting to long distance, though, and her back was hurt, so that would have been a silly risk to take. We all stayed home on Saturday and just enjoyed the farm in every possible way.

Then very early Sunday morning, per a bedtime agreement from the night before,  she and I crept out at sunrise and struck out for our first ever run together. She was sweet enough to pace slowly with her old mama for seven laps. As we ran I had to suppress every urge to warn her of slippery red rocks or fallen limbs, to grab her elbow when her head flew too close to a pine branch. She isn’t a baby anymore I kept having to repeat to myself. Hard habit to break, you know?

Anyway, after lap seven she popped out one ear-bud, smiled, and said with all manner of coolness, “I’m just gonna wrap this up!” And then she evaporated. I have no idea where she ran to, she was so fast. I think she was abducted by aliens, the way she just tore off the well beaten dirt path like quicksilver.

A natural sprinter, indeed. I ran one more mile while she fed the horses before church, and I could not stop smiling. It took several years, but we finally ran together. And that is more special to me than any practice run with strangers could ever be.

So my heart is brimming as I type this, even though my miles are lagging ever so slightly. I started this new week off strong, again, and have every reason to believe that my body is capable of doing whatever I ask it to do.

More importantly. I have every reason to believe that Love is powerful enough to answer every prayer, no matter how impossible it seems.

Keep running, friends. And never stop hoping and praying!

XOXOXOXO

 

Flower Bulb Winner!

Wow you guys! I am so happy for my friend Dee and all the much deserved attention she has enjoyed with her first book’s Valentine’s Day release. Gardeners and readers from all over God’s green earth have been scrambling to enter the giveaway here and at the other spectacular blogs participating. More importantly, though, people are buying her smart, gorgeous book. I hope you are too! The 20-30 Something Guide to Gardening is easily the most beautiful and accessible gardening book on my heavily laden shelves. I LOVE it.

Well, it’s time to announce the Longfield Gardens tulip & daffodil bulb giveaway winner.

Drumroll…..

 

25 daffodil bulbs from Longfield Gardens
25 daffodil bulbs from Longfield Gardens
25 tulip bulbs from Longfield Gardens
25 tulip bulbs from Longfield Gardens

 

 

From upwards of 70 entries, all of which made my heart go pitter patter with the overflowing garden passion and general sparkling friendliness, the randomly chosen winner is…

Debbie S.!!

She added this comment:

I have a perennial garden and a small vegetable garden. I seem to grow a lot of different salvias. I love the variety and how hummingbirds flock to most of them.

Yay Debbie, congratulations!! I hope you will stay in touch with us here at the W and let us know how your gardens do this year. Maybe post pics to the Facebook page of how you incorporate the flower bulbs into your gardens!

That goes for all of you. I am so thrilled to have met so many wonderful new people through this fun event. I hope to get better acquainted with everybody and share lots of garden knowledge and encouragement this season. And just some laughs along the way. Be sure you find this book and enjoy it. It is a treasure.

Thank you Dee for this unique experience. Thank you Longfield Gardens for the generous prize. And thanks to all of you fine people for participating. I hope we stay in touch. Happy Gardening!

“I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose

 I would always greet it in the garden.”

~Ruth Stout

XOXOXOXO

Friday 5 at the Farm: Signs of Spring

Wahoo, friends! I know it’s still February and lots can happen between now and our last average frost date, which is Tax Day, but the farm is showing so many signs of springtime. I can barely stand myself. So this week’s Friday 5 at the Farm is just a little springtime celebration. Perhaps a smidgen early, but still.

  1. Temperatures are soaring! Our house heater has been turned off most days, windows open. Fresh air is such a mood lifter.
  2. The rose vines and thornless blackberry vines are slowly trading their winter browns for an easy, mild, slightly naughty shade of green.
  3. The horses are beginning to shed. I mean, it could be from being brushed… but still.
  4. The buds on my saucer magnolia are fattening up  and getting fuzzier every day. Several are just threatening to crack apart, too, like little fortune-telling pistachios. This is exciting. And it makes me want to wear bright pink lipstick.
  5. The hens are not only laying eggs again, which is lovely in and of itself; they are also starting to venture out of the warm coop to lay them in weird little places out in the sun. And they are sitting on eggs with fierce devotion, too, suggesting a fresh batch of chicks soon to arrive. If I would only stop eating the eggs.
(via Pinterest) Here's my next craft project. Simply watercolors on dictionary pages. Pretty!
(via Pinterest) Here’s my next craft project. Simply watercolors on dictionary pages. Pretty!

 

So happy weekend, friends! Happy springtime vigil. Happy everything. Soak it up and show your appreciation for this beautiful, poetic, nourishing life. Every single Diem is worth Carpe-ing.

“You can cut all the flowers but

You cannot keep Spring from coming.”

~Pablo Neruda

XOXOXOXO

 

Bison Smiles

Hello again, and welcome! What a WEEK we have enjoyed at the Lazy W! And there is much more goodness to come. I am feeling very blessed these days and very happily battery-charged in all areas of life. Really loving it.

Today I am answering Mama Kat’s call to share something that made me smile this week. In the midst of so much great stuff, LOTS of big and little things have made me smile, but I’ll just share a string of things that might make you smile too. Ready? It all has to do with our little buff. Our little bachelor bull bison named Chunk-Hi.

 

Chunk-Hi, about 2 1/2 years old here, luxuriating in his hay.
Chunk-Hi, about 2 1/2 years old here, luxuriating in his hay.

Chunk always makes me smile. He just does. He is spirited, affectionate, silly, gentle, tough, vulnerable, intelligent, greedy, and innocent. He loves to play peekaboo, allowing me to (just barely) cover each of his enormous blinking eyes with one of my hands. And he loves for Handsome to wrestle his horns. He will dance like a native for loud music or revved up V-8 engines. And he loves cookies, protein pellets, cookies, cookies, and hay, as the photo above shows, and cookies. I mean he LOVES hay. He flips for it, literally. As for the cookies, Chunk-Hi may or may not have bison diabetes. Is that a thing?

This week the weather in Oklahoma has been mercifully warm and easy. The animals all love it, Chunk especially. He wallows in the sand like there’s no tomorrow, and he naps like a champ. So I am frequently mesmerized by him and his pasture mates, watching them snooze or graze or just play around with each other. Below is a snapshot I took today of Chunk with his very best friend in the world, Dusty. Dusty is our girls’ little horse. Also a true-blue sweetie.

Chunk-Hi and Dusty, not an odd couple at all. They are best buds. A farmyard bromance. Bruthas from othha muthas. I'll stop now, you get the idea.
Chunk-Hi and Dusty, not an odd couple at all. They are best buds. A farmyard bromance. BFF’s. Bruthas from othha muthas. I’ll stop now, you get the idea.

Today I was minding my own business, just enjoying the farm, when a friend of ours messaged me a joke you’ve probably seen before, in different incarnations.

hardee har har har... It's funny because it's true!
hardee har har har… It’s funny because it’s true!

Well, of course I laughed. Because these tense conversations have happened here on those sub-zero arctic nights.

“Do you think they’ll be warm enough?”

“Babe. They’re fine. They’re built for this.”

“But they’re so sad.”

But it’s warm now and we are no longer concerned for our pets (or livestock) being so cold they need to cuddle up on our Berber carpet.

This funny message brought back to my memory a story from when Chunk was a wee little guy.

My little baby Chunk! Those sweet, sweet ears! At about a year old he always looked like a Fozzy the Bear to me. With teeny tiny horns. If you don't know who Fozzy the bear is, you're too young to read this blog.
My little baby Chunk! Those sweet, sweet ears! At about a year old he always looked like a Fozzy the Bear to me. With teeny tiny horns. If you don’t know who Fozzy the bear is, you’re too young to read this blog.

Isn’t he one hundred percent precious??

Those narrow little hooves. Those eyes, always searching or blinking slowly or shying away from the sun. That skinny black ridge on his back, so soon to become a full blown bison hump. That wet, square, leathery nose.

I LOVE HIM SO DANG MUCH!!!

It makes me grit my teeth.

Well, one springtime afternoon right around the time this photo was taken, my youngest daughter and I were home alone. I had the doors and windows open as is customary on gorgeous, breezy days in Oklahoma. And several of the large animals were loose, just nibbling the verdant lawn and otherwise pretending to be people. Which is to say, not doing anything I told them to do. Chunk was generally included in the “large animal” category despite his diminutive stature.

I do not remember what triggered it, but all of a sudden Jess and I both realized that Chunk had stepped through the open front door, trip-trapped his way across the roughly tiled entryway, and was coming towards us as we worked on her homework and probably ate cookies.

Okay, now listen.

We were in exactly zero danger. Do you see this little guy? Admittedly, if this happened today with Chunk’s one million pounds of solid muscle and eight foot long pointed horns, I would be telling you a completely different story. But I want you to imagine his adorable little baby face awash in terror because his slick, pointed hooves could find no purchase on the shiny wood floors.

Okay I am pretending right now that my wood floors were shiny. But please just go with it.

And I am his mama! Since day two of his tender little life we have bottle fed him, and I have spent practically every day of his life feeding and playing with him. He trusts me!

Spring 2009/ Before everybody grew up! (We had 2 babies at first but sadly lost one almost immediately.)
Spring 2009. Before everybody grew up, daughters and buffalo alike. (We had 2 calves at first but sadly lost one almost immediately.) Also back when our front field was still lush and green. Bison wallow. They wallow so much.

So he stared at me and made these panicked  little mewing, bleating, grunting sounds, convinced I could somehow help him, but the harder he tried to stand upright the more precarious his situation became. Think… ice skating for the first time. In public. On a buttered rink.

And I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s a disease, I realize, this nervous laughter when things are going horribly wrong. Jess and I surrounded Chunk and did our best to guide him in a semi circle back toward the front door, where hopefully the rough tile would be a small help. He couldn’t calm down enough to be lifted, though he was still small enough, so air hugs had to do.

We successfully corralled him with air hugs out through the open front door and he let us cuddle and pet for a few minutes, both of us still laughing. Poor little guy.

At this point in the story, two of Handsome’s colleagues and also our friends, Bob and Trent, pulled a rental car up in the driveway. I think there was a business trip that day?  Anyway, Jess and I immediately exploded into full on story telling mode, simultaneously digesting what had just transpired.The men just stared at us, laughing awkwardly. Chunk was standing calmly on the sidewalk by then, so I am not sure either Bob or Trent believed us. For a while it bothered me that we had removed Chunk from the house so quickly, because it seemed like the sort of incident that requires photo documentation. But I was also really glad it happened when Jess was home so she and I could share that silly memory.

So there you have it. A smile while watching my now five year old bull eat his breakfast. Then a smile at a joke because I have indeed considered bringing the animals inside during a cold snap. And still more smiles to remember that time Chunk accidentally slipped into our living room. So many smiles today!

What has made you smile this week?

“You can lead a buffalo anywhere he wants to go.”

Slightly famous buffalo quote

XOXOXO

What Opening Papa Joe’s Journal has Also Opened Up

After posting that first little excerpt from my great-grandfather’s apiary journal, a couple of wonderful things have happened. It all makes me even more excited to continue exploring this delicate treasure.

First, I took the old green journal with me to last month’s Frontier Country beekeepers’ meeting and asked one of the old timers, Chuddie, if he recognized my Papa Joe’s name. It may sound like a long shot to you, but Joe Nieberding was a slightly older contemporary of Chuddie’s in the seventies and eighties, and the Oklahoma beekeepers keep a pretty tight circle. Also, Papa Joe was apparently president of the statewide beekeepers’ association for some years and was pretty well known.

Well, Chuddie definitely recognized the name. His face lit up and he nodded slowly then said with firmness, “Oh yeah, yes of course I knew him! Joe was quite a beekeeper. I learned a lot from him.” That was the first time I had ever heard someone refer to our family patriarch without his proper title, “Papa,” and it was strangely endearing. The feeling was akin to realizing your parents have friends and colleagues who love and respect them but have nothing to do with you or your siblings. Weird, but proud. And never mind that I had first just shown Chuddie this yellowed newspaper clipping of my Papa Joe. 

Papa Joe calming a swarm of wild bees, most likely destined for his personal apiary in Miami, OK.
This is Papa Joe calming a swarm of wild bees, most likely destined for his personal apiary in Miami, OK. I found the photo between the pages of his beautifully scrawled journal.

 

“Do you know this man?” I said awkwardly, indicating someone fully dressed and covered to the point of perfect anonymity.

“Are you touched in the head?” Chuddie might have thought. “Someone take her bees away pronto.” 

Anyway, Chuddie was as sweet as honey and never actually said that. In fact his kind words about Papa Joe brought tears to my eyes. I resolved at that moment to learn everything I possibly could from this journal. It really is a treasure, both from the family history perspective and that of the beekeeper trying to learn from someone’s firsthand experience.

 

This journal entry mentions missing bees with no explanation as well as queen economics, two problems that beekeepers still discuss. And January rain.
This journal entry mentions missing bees with no explanation as well as queen economics, two problems that beekeepers still discuss. And January rain.

 

Whatever your hobby, wouldn’t you love to have an expert with decades of experience coaching you, whispering gently at your elbow of his trials and errors while you feel your way through a new challenge?

That brief exchange with Chuddie was amazing and inspirational. Then this happened…

Last week I received a note from a gentleman named  John Foust, a distant cousin who grew up with my Dad and his siblings and who spent lots of time with Papa and Mimi Nieberding during his college years. You can actually read John’s first note as a comment on that first apiary journal entry; I’ve inserted it here.

Joe Nieberding was my grandmother’s little brother. I grew up with the wonder of his veterinary hospital, his bees, his pigeons and his amazing garden. And the mysterious basement. I spent a lot of time with him, refitting the wax bee frames, playing with some of the puppies, and hearing him name some of the pigeons. Aunt Velma and I attended community concerts together at the NEO Fine Arts Center, my first experience with some of the old big band groups such as Fred Waring. Velma’s mother Mrs. Seamster lived across the street from the college. I mowed her lawn as a kid, and parked in her driveway when I attended NEO. She always had a jar of cookies for a hungry college student. Uncle Joe’s notebook must be an amazing peek back into history for you. The story I remember as what must have been most memorable was that “Army Captain” Joe and Velma attended the premier showing of Gone With The Wind in Atlanta. Velma talked about the reception afterward with the actors. Dr. Joe and Velma were amazing people.

Wow. This beautiful couple who were already gentle, loving, and fascinating to my memory have so many stories I have never heard. What a colorful life they built! I had no idea that sharing Papa Joe’s apiary journal piecemeal would yield such a wonderful history lesson, such a kaleidoscope view into my own family. 

John I have emailed a bit since and I am hopeful that along with my Dad he will help me share more stories about the Nieberding gardens, home life, and bee yards. It all felt so magical to me as a little girl, and my wish to know more might be granted.

And can I just say how refreshing it is that someone else remembers the fabled cellar and its toothy  dangers? I mean, I grew up believing all dark bodies of standing water to contain hungry crocodiles. Even small puddles.

This gorgeous honeycomb, empty, still smells magical. I keep it on my writing desk.
This gorgeous honeycomb, empty, still smells magical. I keep it on my writing desk.

What childhood memories of your own would you like to expand? Which of your elders would you love to sit down with and take notes from their lives? Who do you emulate, either accidentally or by design?

For the record, we only have alligators in Oklahoma.

Definitely no crocodiles.

Probably.

XOXOXOXO