Lazy W Marie

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

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Spring Garden Update

   Spring is really, truly here you guys. It is here to stay, at least for a while. We may only have a couple of weeks before Oklahoma Summer 2013 descends on us in all of her hot and humid glory, so I have a lot of green and dirty living to do. Lots to prepare and enjoy before facing that particular seasonal brutality.

   The gardens are filling in their own blanks quite nicely. They require thinning and grooming every day, especially in the radish and carrot beds, but no watering! Our rainfall in Oklahoma has been mercifully consistent.

My Grandpa has always gently scolded me for planting radishes too thickly.
The result is having to thin aggressively, but my chickens & geese eat the sprouts.
Sometimes I do too, in a green salad. They look like clover & taste peppery, tangy.

   The potatoes are finally multiplying. The spinach, rainbow chard, and myriad lettuces are drop dead gorgeous. And even more delicious than the are pretty. The sweet pea and English pea vines are as tall and fluffy as anything you’ve ever seen in your life. Honestly? This year the actual leaves on the pea vine are ginormous! Like, Jurassic big. Way too big really. I am afraid of how big the peas will be. Bowling ball size? Probably.

Back Seeded Simpson and Romaine lettuce sprouts, photo taken a couple of weeks ago.
Imagine they are a million times fuller now. Because they are.

   Last night I discovered my first butter colored cauliflower you guys! She is pale yellow, dense, and perfect. Tucked primly inside the massive green plant she calls home, dreaming calmly of low-carb recipes. Her neighbor, the brussel sprout, is putting on evidence of edibility too. Broccoli, two kinds of cabbage, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, you name it. So far, except for corn and basil, we have a little bit of everything growing somewhere around here. Even chocolate mint which smells like angels in heaven are making York peppermint patties for breakfast while watching Casablanca.

This broccoli bolted on a hot day. But if you pinch off the center blooms and keep yellow leaves cleaned off,
the plant will set food peripherally and the results are DELISH.
Colorful green and red (purple) cabbages are tightening up finally, and the spinach fills in beautifully.

   Another sign of spring, Chink-hi the buffalo has begun his annual shed extravaganza  So cute. I need to snap some photos for you, because the way his body releases its winter coat, the patterns in which he gradually achieves his warm weather version of nudity, is so hilarious. Right now his skinny little rump and the wide spaces around his giant liquid eyes are the only bare spots. And they reveal how crazy thick his coat has been all these months! Like an inch of matted, woolly fur all over his strong body. No joke.

   I have had our house windows open for days. Very little wind here except during the nighttime thunderstorms, just cool crisp breezes. And temperatures are looking better and better every day. This is a rare kind of meteorological bliss for us here in Indian Territory.

   I am done substitute teaching for the school year.

   The laundry is caught up.

   The kitchen is stocked.

   And I have that “the world is my oyster” kinda feeling. Can you guess that today and for as many days after as I can manage it, Handsome will find me half-buried in the gardens? Dirt manicures, rolled up jeans, and careless ponytails. These are the days. These are the weeks.

Thornless blackberry vines crawling up our forest-pole arbor.
They have set dozens, maybe hundreds of buds already.

   This is the life.

   What’s growing in your garden? Please connect with this blog on Facebook and share photos! So fun to see what people love in different parts of this beautiful world. Happy Spring-slash-Summer you guys.

“Won’t you come into my garden?
 I want my roses to see you.”
 ~Richard Sheridan
18th century Irish playwright & poet
xoxoxoxo

 

Take a Breath

   This farm has lost its ever-loving mind. Every day we discover new chaos and silliness. Greedy horses. Specifically, Chanta. A pregnant llama who thinks its funny to never have babies. Honeybees who visit us but apparently sleep and make honey elsewhere. A parrot who screams wildly, with the appearance of random noise but with really specific messages we are slow to interpret. A cat who refuses the food we buy but also hunts the cardinals. A guard dog who escapes and runs free but gets spat on by a guard llama. A buffalo who has severe separation anxiety. Roosters who battle each other despite the fact that they share a harem of twenty hens. Geese. Just, geese.

See? Even our photos are crazy.

   If Handsome and I couldn’t laugh about it, we would be clawing our faces off.

   So we laugh. We laugh so much. And our face or more or less in tact.

   Lots to tell, more to do. Happy Tuesday everyone!

   Over and out.

   xoxoxoxo

Senses Inventory, Friday Joy

   Happy Friday afternoon my beautiful friends! What a week. Yes, I say that a lot. But I always mean it.

   What. A. Week.

   What a month.

   What a year.

   What a life!

   As we tip-toe toward the quick little recess we call a weekend, I have exactly enough time and energy for a Senses Inventory…


My youngest daughter and I saw this at the OKC Arts Fest again last week.
Every year she and I contribute to this cool community art display,
nothing more than shreds of fabric tied to some PVC structures.
And this year I am bringing the inspiration home. 
The veggie garden arbor is getting dolled up!
All visitors this summer are invited to play!

See: A pair of cardinals dancing in the air above the bird feeder. Stacks of folded clean laundry in the living room. A mason jar filled with browned but still pretty clippings from the forest. A flat of newly purchased herbs and marigolds on the table next to me. My unfinished Don Quixote. (Book club dinner is in two hours, yikes!) Shiny yellow ceramic dish shaped like cabbage leaves. Abundant, if cool, sunshine. Thick, soft green grass outside the kitchen door. One inviting chaise lounge and one shredded by a recent conflict with the buffalo.

Hear: Pacino grooming his papery feathers, blowing me parrot kisses, and clucking softly. The periodic click of the oven and hum of the refrigerator. Pickup truck driving past the farm. Wind. So much wind.

Smell: Clean laundry, pecan shortbread cookies, soapy water, coffee, roasting red grapes, seven different fresh herbs and their damp soil (I love that fragrance!), and my own perfume. Calvin Klein One today.

Touch: This beloved keyboard. My smooth cotton apron. A pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses that keep getting tangled up in my hair.

Taste: Perfect coffee. Really, really perfect coffee. The kind made with a French Press and hot cream. So good. Also, traces of olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary, plus toasted pecans and butter shortbread, all from sampling two recipes as I cooked this afternoon. Lipstick.

Think: About my daughters. Their hearts, their memories, their futures. About my parents. About the balance between living life and earning a living. About self worth and how complicated and fluctuating that concept is for me. About how I need about a month of nothing else to do so I can catch up on all of the incredible writers close to me.

Feel: Inspired. Calm. Stronger than I did this time a year ago, that’s for sure. Itching to run again. Excited for our book club dinner tonight, but also sad because we have recently lost members. Lucky. I feel so dang lucky in life.

The raised beds are growing our earliest crops like magic!!
Even the tropicals are faring well in this super weird May weather.

   What’s up with you? Was your work week overall pretty amazing? Do you have beauty surrounding you and love inspiring you? Do you have thoughts worth thinking rattling around in your head?

   Life isn’t perfect, but it certainly is full of wonder and grace. Be sure to feed that wolf, the good one, as the Native American legend goes, not the evil one.

Happy Weekending Everyone!
Thank you so much for stopping in at the digital Lazy W.
xoxoxoxo

 

 

Fueled

   It’s early Tuesday morning following the 2013 OKC Memorial marathon. The sun is still snuggled deep in the purple-black folds of the eastern sky. I am only half a cup of perfect coffee into this new day. Nothing is awake outside. Not a rooster, not a horse, not even the cranked up tree frogs who will serenade us to sleep if we let them. Wait, I do hear a goose. I think we all know which one. 

   The house feels hot and stuffy, so I open the kitchen door and enjoy the crisp breeze that promises another gorgeous day. Now the dining room is flooded with delicate birdsong and the hum of the interstate a couple of miles south.

   I feel like anything is possible.

   I know that anything is possible, so I choose my thoughts and prayers carefully. With those tightly reined, I can dream wildly. With abandon and trust.

   My feet crave the cool, spongy path of clover between the raised garden beds. My shoulders crave the sun. My eyes and nose crave a broad, curving expanse of herbs growing outside the kitchen window. I want to swim in the pond that is still topping its highest ridge. I want to explore the forest, napping on the thick pine needle mattresses and finding wild mushrooms and roses.

   I want to love the people close to me more fiercely and more gently than ever.

   Running the half marathon was one of the most positive experiences of my life. Until finishing it myself, I would have found that statement a bit cliche. So if you want to roll your eyes when you read that, I get it. Truly. But you guys… So many unexpected things happen in your mind and your body on long runs; and then so many more things happen when you share a long run with thousands of strangers… particularly in remembrance of such an event as the Murrah Building Bombing of 1995. Ignoring the myriad awakenings would be such a waste.

   So today, two days after the event, my heart is full in ways I did not expect. I love our beautiful renaissance City even more. I feel more bonded to our people, the strangers for sure but also and especially my parents in law and my brother and nephew. I feel like celebrating life more fully than ever.

   There is so much reason to celebrate.

   There is so, so much living to do!

   How are you going about it today?

Jangly Nerves & Positive Thinking

   The Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon is this weekend. As I type this, in about 58 hours thousands of people from all over the world will convene in our beautiful city and run different distances at varying speeds in remembrance of  April 19, 1995.

   And I will find out if I have prepared well enough for the half.

   Honestly, you guys, I am terrified. I am worried that I won’t make it past mile 9 (the longest I have run so far) or that my yoga pants or the elastic of whatever stupid, not matching outfit I end up wearing that day will fail when everyone is looking. I am worried that 6:30 a.m. is too early for my body to do much of anything besides drink coffee, enjoy the sunrise, and watch chickens and llamas do their thing. Will Handsome be willing to have a 4 am Hot Tub Summit with me that day?
   I am worried that while running with strangers a big gust of Oklahoma wind will kick up on an unfamiliar urban hill and steal my favorite turquoise beekeeper’s ball cap, Velcro fastener mangling my ponytail in the process, and that I will be so devastated that I exit the race to reclaim it. I will then trample someone’s perfectly designed tulip-and-pansies flower bed and never show my face on the north side of town again. I am worried about embarrassing my little brother and our nephew, who are also running that day, and I’m desperately worried that my beautiful daughters will be there on the sidelines and feel embarrassed of me.

   For the past nine months or so I have been “training,” sometimes strictly but often not. There has certainly been slow, steady progress; my abilities today are without a doubt beyond what they were last summer when this all started. But at this moment on Thursday evening before the race, a sort of panic is overtaking my confidence like an ugly oil spill.

   Side note #1: Isn’t it interesting to note the nine months detail? 
Amazing things can happen with a woman’s body in that slice of time.

   Enough negativity.

   No doubt about it, if I can get my thoughts and feelings under control then everything will be fine. The race will be a success. I will come home with my favorite hat and a medal to give my parents-in-law (I’m running for them), and no one will pretend like they don’t know me. At least, not any more than they already do.

   Running is absolutely a mental game, and I recently enjoyed some proof of this fact. Would you like to hear a little story?

   This past Monday afternoon I went for exactly my second public run since junior high P.E. class. Running in public is a ginormous phobia for me, adding to my building sense of dread and doom for this weekend.

   I drove to a municipal park about twenty minutes from our farm, believing the paved track around it to be one mile. At home I am accustomed to running two miles before stopping for water, so at this park I planned to do the same. Two miles, which would be two laps. Right? I listened to the same music, kept my normal pace, and just kind of got lost in the zone.


   Side note #2: I used to regard sports metaphors with a special disdain, 
believing them to be contrived and super dorky and not sincere. 
Now I know they are anything but that. There really is such place as a zone, 
and it it’s absolutely magical there.

   Back to Monday.

   I ran steadily, following this lovely paved path which alternated between sun and shade, semi-private and very public. I celebrated inwardly how friendly people are to runners. Then at the end of two laps I felt thirstier and much looser and more warmed up than I usually do after two miles. I checked my phone and saw that rather than twenty minutes, I had been running for almost an hour! It was shocking. I later confirmed the path I took was three point-something miles.

Side note #3: I have the best running music in the universe.

  The point this proves is that my body could fulfill the expectations placed on it by my mind. I thought I was running two miles, which is easy, so I just kept going. Easily. And it turned out to be six. Then grabbing one final three-mile lap was a breeze, and I finished nine miles giggling out loud.

   Once my mind was distracted and in the zone, my body naturally followed suit. I have no doubt that if I had been focused on difficulty, that would have been my experience.

   The whole thing is flat out exhilarating. The physical, the mental, the emotional… All of it.

   So while I cannot predict the exact results of Sunday’s race, I can insist on a return to positive thinking and trust that it will foster a good experience. I can support my little brother and our nephew for their incredible efforts. I can thank my husband for supporting me in mine. And I can love and honor the people for who I am running, the rescue workers and morgue workers:

Harvey Wreath
Judy Wreath
Alan Prokop

   Thanks for listening to me sort this thing out. The big irony here is that running has become my stress reliever and at this eleventh hour, no matter how stressed I am, I’m not supposed to run anymore, just rest and stretch till Sunday.
   Continue to pray for the city of Boston, and when you wake up Sunday morning send me some positive vibes!

“Winning is not bout headlines and hardware (medals).
  It’s only about attitude. A winner is a person who goes out today
  and every day and attempts to be the best person he can be.
  Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism,
  and never, ever, ever giving up.”
~Amby Burfoot, Editor-at-Large, Runner’s World
xoxoxoxo