Lazy W Marie

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

You are here: Home / Home

Urgent Prayer Request for Savannah

   Friends, please stop and take time as soon as possible to pray for this beautiful, sweet little girl. Her name is Savannah. She needs a touch from God immediately, and her wonderful, loving parents need Him too.

“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, 
and the Lord shall raise him up…”
~James 5:15

“I shall not die, but live, and 
declare the works of the Lord.”
~Psalm 118:17

“Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
and thine health shall spring forth speedily:
and thy righteousness shall go before thee;
the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.”
~Isaiah 58:8

Thank you so much!
God is able.
xoxoxo

Quiet Beauty Abounds

I went on a short walk through the forest today, after all the work was done, between luxurious bursts of cold rain, and was overwhelmed by the quiet beauty there. The earth was spongy. The trees were soaked, leaves dripping and limbs nearly black. The breeze sent this fresh, ozone like fragrance through every open air space. Deer paths were easier to find today too.

Nothing fought for my attention. I just walked and admired and said inward thanks for everything that thrives without our “help.”

God is so good. In the dark of a deciduous grove just around the corner from Yoga Meadow, I discovered three different flowering trees. They glowed against the pine trees and dormant blackjacks. I couldn’t resist bringing home enough branches to fill one vase.

Then I circled the grove once more, then the meadow, then home where the horses welcomed me with that weird attitude of indignation they have anytime we leave.

I hope you have time to go quietly absorb some natural beauty today. What you find today might be fleeting.

XOXOXO

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.4

Things I Forgot to Tell You Guys

  • Last week M Half and I got lost in the adjacent Pine forest. (It was fairly nightmarish and a full story is coming soon.) Then this past Monday we reentered said forest to unearth an old rusty bike and take some photos of the path of our original trek. Because we’re cool. That made twice that we made it through the Pine forest alive.
  • This past Saturday I hosted eight other Oklahoma bloggers at the farm. They made a huge, lasting impression on me and, big surprise, a blog post is coming soon. I have delayed it only because I wanted to do it right. These women are wonderful.
  • A few mornings ago Mia the gander joined Handsome and me for  Hot Tub Summit. What that means is that he actually got into the very warm water with us. I was a nervous wreck because I have never literally cooked a goose before and was unclear as to the required water temperature. I mean, for an egg it can be considerably cooler than for a chicken, so… Anyway, Mia is totally fine but the hot tub needed cleaning immediately thereafter.
  • My two daughters and my nephew are stair step ages, once upon a time ages 1, 2, & 3. Now they are 14, 15, & 16. Takes my breath away. Hope is swelling, though. Please continue to pray for these three incredible young people. Thanks. xoxo
  • My mother in law recently gave me four brand new apron patterns that are begging to be cut and served with luscious scrap fabrics. I occasionally sew and sell aprons and towels and such, so if you have a hankerin to add some textiles to your kitchen, drop me a line! 
  • Our chickens are laying regularly now, which is just plain thrilling. A Vietnamese woman who came to buy a sleeper sofa from us asked if I sell them. I said no but gave her a dozen because I had refused to barter more on the price of the sofa. This totally assuaged my faint guilt.
  • To my eternal shock and awe, our fruit trees are alive. Yay!
  • Handsome and I are shopping online tonight for furniture to go in our green room, where we watch t.v. and play games if friends are here etc. This is where a relationship shows its true colors, folks. To illustrate, here is what I think we need, in duplicate:
Regarding photo source here, 
Pinterest is leading me on a wild goose chase.
The best I can summon is designer Kelly Wearstler.
Or possibly Country Living.
  • Seventeen days until the beekeeping class! Woohoo! I get to bring one person with me. Raise your hand if you’re surprised Handsome isn’t that interested in going.
  • Tomorrow is my thirty-eighth birthday. Aside from being spoiled rotten by my husband, I just feel so happy. Life has reached this glowing, vibrant, wide-view chapter. The problems we have are in pretty solid perspective, we are blessed beyond what we deserve, and our hearts are brimming with hope. 
Talk to you Guys Tomorrow!
I Might Be the Luckiest Girl Ever.
xoxoxoxo

5 Senses Tour as Spring Warms Up

   In Oklahoma, we feel like Mother Nature has most likely abandoned winter, which was wonderfully manageable this year anyway. While I am in shock that the first week of March is already here, all the excitement of early spring keeps me from doing the normal where did time go?! dance of panic and self denigration. The fruit trees and saucer magnolias are quietly budding; the daffodils are providing strong shots of neon yellow in every hidden corner; and the chickens and four leggeds are steeped in romance, if ya know what I mean. Wink-wink!
   Today is Tuesday. I have a long list of chores to finish and an even longer list of blog posts I’ve been intending to write, but only the standard number of hours in the day. So in the mean time here’s a little Five Senses Tour.
********************
Hearing: Wind. Strong, familiar, almost violent wind whipping us silly from every single direction, several times a minute. This is in stark contrast to the calm, idyllic days we’ve been noticing lately, but now noticing the wind isn’t a complaint. We’re really used to it. It’s how we all know we’re home. Today the wind is so strong that even the guineas have found shelter and are keeping quiet. No television, no music, no people talking here at the farm, just the clackety clack of my keyboard, the hum of the CPU, and the incredible, four corners of the globe Oklahoma wind. Wait, I also hear Mia honking for love.
How cute is this?? #OkieLove
Seeing: I am anxious to finish the book Game Change ahead of the HBO movie which airs this weekend. Also seeing all the quiet, sneaky details of early springtime all around us.
Smelling: Coconut candle given to me by Rose, clean hair, the end of my last cup of coffee, and new perfume.
Tasting: *Imaginary* fresh local honey! Yesterday I received the very happy news that we are signed up for a beekeeping class later this month! More on this when it’s not Five Senses Day, but for now, pretend with me that you have just collected honey manufactured by your own fuzzy little bees, unprocessed, raw, perfect, molten-lava honey. Bliss…
Feeling: Running and exercising in new tennis shoes rather than bare feet. Umm, yes. Weird-feeling. But I think this is a good move. Also feeling the belly button suspense that precedes a heavy storm.
Thinking: About the choices we have between hope and despair. About the power of Love and trusting Him. Romans 8:28; I Corinthians 1:23-24
Planning: To rearrange the downstairs furniture in order to welcome a new couch tonight. Also planning to clean up this cool old bicycle that M Half and I extricated from the Pine forest yesterday.
Praying: For Jocelyn and Jessica. That they continue to thrive, that they feel our love, that the gap between us closes in the right ways, at the right time.  For my sister Angela and her children. For my husband’s sister Tyrene and her family.

This was the first glimpse of a special sunset we caught over the weekend.

Yes, I know that is more than five senses. 
But it’s still far less than what 
we are able to perceive when quieted.

Live fully today.
xoxoxo

5 senses tour

Reviewing My New Manifesto

   Well, it happened again. I finished a book and am awash in mixed feelings. It reminds me of the last day of a school year when you loved your teacher so much, so deeply, that you can barely stand to say goodbye, yet the teaching is done and summer awaits. Tonight I am equal parts numb from the vigorous grooming and tingling with motivation to put this new knowledge into action.
   Studying Barbara Kingsolver’s memoir of her family’s twelve-month foray into strict locavorism has been a spiritual experience for me. No kidding. She offers us in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a literary gumbo of earth science, animal husbandry, human cultural history, religion & morality (yep, I think those are different), politics, economics, and philosophy. With a hefty dash of humor. I read it on multiple high recommendations from trusted people, and now I suppose I’m offering my own:
   Buy this book. It is an inexpensive purchase (I spent less that seven bucks on my hardback copy, albeit second hand). Don’t check it out, because I predict you’ll be marking and dog-earing and highlighting yours a lot. I sure did. One way or another, if you love food, read this wonderful book. 
   If you have the gardening sickness or a penchant for raising your own edible animals, study these pages. I found them to be endlessly inspirational this week between monotonous chores. When I thought that the wheel-barrowing of dried manure would never end and the glorious day to plant my broccoli starts would never come, much less the clipping of fragrant basil, I just sat down with a glass of water and soaked up half a chapter of the book. And my bones found the energy they needed for a few more circuits of shoveling and  bed filling. Her words helped me to visualize my summer garden.
   Even if the mission of eating locally is not that appealing to you, it’s an incredible family story and raises a plethora of tantalizing debate topics for your smarmy dinner parties. 
   And yes, I know what a plethora is.
   There are so many things I could tell you about this book. Let me just try to tempt you a little rather than  rewrite her masterpiece:
Some of the Juicy Topics That Beg Further Discussion:
  • Environmental overdraft
  • Demand side management
  • Illusion of top soil
  • Realignment with the food chain
  • Food Culture, or lack thereof
  • Knowing the provenance of your food
  • Self sufficiency as an act of patriotism, pointing back to Thomas Jefferson
  • Amish values and the beauty of boundaries
  • Agricultural agnostic
  • Xantolo
  • Culture being the property of a species, not just of the wealthy
  • Growing pizza
  • Life as a zero-sum equation (time management comment)
  • The draw to garden again and again and again, despite hardship
  • Economics of growing it yourself and the intrinsic rewards that overshadow this
  • The differences between harvesting and killing
  • The religion of time saving
  • Food Security
…And so much more. I need to find a few other people who have read this book in order to bounce some things around. Julia assures me that contacting the author would not be stalker-ish, but I have my doubts. 

How about a few quotes that glowed most brightly to my eyes?
“A lifetime is what I’m after.” Me too. Enough with the instant gratification business. We’re missing so much by rushing.
“From the ground up, everything about nourishment steadies my soul.” She spoke at length here about everything from soil preparation to harvesting and cooking from scratch for your family and friends.
“I decided my poultry patient could use a mental health day.” Amen, sister! This was from a particularly excellent chapter about heirloom turkey reproduction.
“Perfect is not the currency of farming.” Perfect is much less beautiful anyway.
“Cooking is 80% confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.” This made me cry. My girls started cooking when they could barely stand steady on a chair at the kitchen counter, and a half aprons looked like ball gowns on their beautiful, skinny little bodies.
“One of the best things gardens can teach students is respect: for themselves, for others, and the environment.” How exciting, by the way, that school systems around the country are adopting curricula that get their students dirty and happy! 
“Some things you learn by having to work around the word no.” Brilliant.
“For one thing, hogs are intelligent enough to become unharvestable.” Perhaps you have noticed a conspicuous absence of hogs at the Lazy W.
and finally…
“Nothing is more therapeutic than to walk up there 
and disappear into the yellow-green smell of the tomato rows 
for an hour to address the concerns of quieter, 
more manageable colleagues. Holding the soft, viny limbs 
as tender as babies’ wrists, I train them to their trellises, 
tidy the mulch at their feet, inhale the oxygen of their thanks.”

   Are you sighing along with me? And I promise you that Kingsolver retains her sense of wonder and poetry in every single chapter. I have never read so many cold, hard facts written this lyrically.
   Speaking of chapters, there are twenty. The story begins with some background about the family’s motivation for this journey and ends just after their year of locavorism concludes. Every chapter is an adventure, and the author shares the papery stage with her husband and teenage daughter. 

   I have to admit a smidge of relief to understand that they viewed the year long experience as a singular one, but still one that would precipitate change in their lives. I personally am just not energetic or reliable enough to be a fanatical about anything, so it grooves me to approach the ideas herein gently, with slowness and a bit of caution. In other words, the Lazy W will be supplementing our groceries more heavily this year than ever before, but I do not predict we will place a buying freeze on all things non local or inorganic.
   
   Have you read this book? Do you want to chat it up with me? Do you want to borrow my copy? Do you need some manure for your compost heap? We have plenty, so bring your shovels.
We Have a Paradise at our Disposal.
xoxoxo


Mama's Losin' It