Lazy W Marie

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

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rooted & grounded

And just like that, we have leaped across the verdant threshold between seasons. My heart is filled all over again with excitement for the coming gardens and with hope for so many yet-unanswered prayers. I know I say that a lot, about hope, but please know that we also celebrate the brick-and-mortar resolutions, the answers, the rewards of waiting and hoping, all the time. Our world lately has been riddled with both good news (really good news), encouragement to expect more of it, and some healthy perspective about how much worse life often is for others. Gratitude is not strong enough a word to express how I feel about it all. I am in awe of what God has been doing for us and the people near us.

Jessica planting some joyful color in her apartment courtyard garden…xoxoxo

Seeds are germinating left and right. The Peeps have officially outgrown their indoor trough home and have moved to the flight pen outside. Broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage starts are suddenly voluptuous; their neighboring snow peas are tendriling upwards on arched cattle panels; and the Mouse Garden is a thick, highly textured bed of kale. Kale!! The Yukon Gold potato box has sprouted with food, and what so far looks like just green confetti will very soon be full ruffles of spinach, kale, arugula, and fancy lettuces. Last year’s chicks, now fully mature hens, are laying eggs regularly and eating all the wild clover I can pull from our new watermelon patch. The horses are shedding as thickly as the cottonwood is about to be blooming, and speaking of blooms, all four of our fruit trees seem to have kept their precious springtime flowers and are all set up for a heavy season of apples, peaches, and plums.

The house stays warm enough most days, now, even with the heater off and the windows open, to keep a sourdough starter going, and I bake fresh bread as often as we crave it. We stay busy outdoors so much longer these days, with the gradually later sunsets and mild weather, just moving easily and with great pleasure from one task to the next. Klaus keeps us company the whole time, and it is wonderful to find him exhausted instead of restless at the end of a day well spent. (My husband says he feels the same way about being able to exhaust me, ha! Hibernation is not for everyone.)

Our middle field especially is greening up, and just a moderate effort to scoop up and relocate manure is making a big difference. The compost bins have stayed so full that I recently started a second, much larger area for experimenting with a faster decomposition method. But now I think it’s too far away from a water source. Oh well, the honeybees love it!

My little herb garden is waking up from winter, and it is so fun to try and visualize what will return, where the truly blank spots are, how to reshape and replenish the small area. It’s a luscious intimacy, to know a garden for a length of time, to become familiar with its dimensions and habits and needs and wants. To know how it behaves in each season, what is asks of the gardener, what it offers in return. In the spaces between perennials, I am scattering seeds like cinnamon basil, dill, zinnias, and more. By Easter Sunday everything should be erupting there. Already, in this garden and in the areas flanking the vegetable gate, day-lilies and vinca have returned. I am so excited about the gomphrena and Mexican petunia. For now my eyes feast on the Jane magnolia petals falling all over the front sidewalk.

We have been craving to host an outdoor yoga night and will do this soon. The weather is just so close to being reliable, and we have only a short list of deck repairs to make first. Local and interested in moonlit yoga and meditation? Stay tuned!

The first three months of this gorgeous new year have been filled with incredible Love, satisfying work, plenty of restoration and deep breathing, and just good, plain, happy daily pleasures. Life at the W is not without stress and certainly out hearts have aches like everyone’s; but we have laid hold of some powerful antidotes and some very agreeable reminders for each other about what matters most, about how to shrug off distractions and quickly refuse energy siphons, and how to really sink in and enjoy the moments. Magnify pleasures. Minimize irritations. When either of us buckles from some outside pressure, I think we are pretty good at showing each other grace and welcoming each other back to paradise. Because paradise, really, is how it so often feels. For these things and much more, I am so deeply grateful.

One last update, I just finished The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. My sister Angela had recommended it, and I found it to be not just thought provoking but deeply confirming of so much I have already been considering. Lots to discuss if you have read this!

Happy Sunday, friends, and happy springtime!

Rooted and Grounded in Love
XOXOXO

thursday thoughts (ramblings, whatever)

Nearly halfway through March (my favorite month) and fast approaching the Spring Equinox (coupled with a full moon!), my sentences are forming with an extra dose of Adam Sandler’s Excited Southerner. If I can get through this blog post with decent spelling and at least the fragrance of a coherent message, I will consider it a win. A big one. I hope you will too.

The thing is, the gardens are happening. They are mostly indoors still, on grow trays and beneath heavy all-day mists and grow lights, but a few bits of chlorophyll have found their way to the actual beds. And I can scarcely catch my breath sometimes.

Have you ever wondered whether Eminem and Eckart Tolle are the same person? Have you considered this possibility? Have you ever seen these men in the same place, at the same time? That’s what I thought. Lose Yourself and The Power of Now and all. Okay. I spent four and a half miles analyzing their similarities the other day, and I can debate this.

I am particularly fond of the following spontaneous breakfast. Among so many great meals recently, this one was a winner:

Kodiak waffle, crunchy peanut butter, habanero jelly. YES.

Our llama was screaming the other night. Screaming the way only llamas can, in that trilling, other-worldly, toxic-femininity tone that he has even though he’s a very territorial boy and only a wee bit toxic. Our neighbors heard the screaming and thought we were in distress. They messaged us with such sweet concern. We laughed so hard. The reason Meh was screaming, in case you need to know, was probably the 65 mph wind gusts for which he was holding the horses responsible. He is a loving creature but not a rational one.

Do you know the difference between a farm kitchen’s “chicken bowl” and the “garden compost” bucket? Do you care to know?

Our baby chicks and ducklings are growing like I have never seen before. Rick Astlee (not pictured, but I promise you ok) is especially monstrous. They empty their multiple food and water jars three to four times per day. And they are really loving human cuddles. Pacino (also not pictured), most of the time, is fine with it all. Their constant gentle “peep-peep-peeping” sounds enough like his long-established kissing sound that he probably thinks they are asking for kisses. He asks them, do they wanna wanna wanna kiss, and they peep again. So it’s symbiotic.

This is Muddles, my parents’ adorbs dog. She is the sweetest but I am ever so slightly worried that my Dad loves her more than me. It’s fine. It’s fine, right? I lived here first, Muddles. You weren’t even born yet when I lived here.

Have you watched any of the Netflix special One Strange Rock yet? Oh man. It is so fascinating, so soothing to listen to, and what truly breathtaking photography. We binged it recently and cannot recommend it highly enough. The overview effect as shared by all the astronauts is exactly what we needed to adjust our perspective and feel a wide, heavy quilt of connectedness. Perfect.

Savory Spice Shop on Western wins again!! I popped in for a couple of refills and to greedily accept my birthday freebie, and the nice ladies suggested this Bohemian Forest spice. Delicious! I added it to half of a roasted sweet potato and some asparagus, and I slow roasted some chicken breasts with it too. So nice and earthy and herbal. Yum. Also, it’s sourdough time again! That’s the jar in the background there. It is almost ready and the weekends are about to get really satisfying.

Ok. How was my grammar? Spelling? General coherence? I had to take lots of deep breaths. The sun is down now and we are one day closer to the weekend, to the new season, to more LIFE. Thank you so much for checking in!!

“Focus is the new IQ.”
(Dammit.)
XOXOXOXO

holding space, and early march update & a new spin on optimism

In like a lion, out like a lamb. That’s the adage I’m celebrating right now, doubling up on the almanac’s confident assurances about an early spring. My local friends will argue that our frigid air temps of late have already proved that prediction wrong; but it was a brief blip on an otherwise sunny outlook. This too shall pass. Let’s cling to that adage as well, which brings me to my favorite reading material this week: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

Have you read this book, or are you listening to Oprah’s piecemeal interview with him, which dissects his other title, A New Earth? The material is such a luscious reinforcement to all the Buddhism we have been absorbing this winter, all the lessons on mindfulness, stillness, and impermanence.

And I may or may not have mentioned this here: For months now I have been receiving crystal clear direction from God to make space and hold it. I crave space in my body, in my schedule, in our home, even in my intimate relationships, though creating space there has been magically coupled with a new layer of more meaningful intimacy. I tried to rationalize it for a while but eventually relaxed and decided that simply doing it could become my daily practice. It has been lovely, and I am only just beginning.

One funny thing about space is that it tends to fill itself up if we aren’t watching. Physical space, especially. We recently sold one car and rearranged the others plus some gym equipment to other outbuildings and in so doing wound up with a completely blank car bay in the garage attached to our house, the one where I do laundry and have a potting/painting bench. How long did that space stay empty? Not very! We went to the feed store last weekend and brought home 21 newly hatched chicks and 2 tiny ducks. They now live in a heated metal horse trough in that “empty space,” ha! Our days since they came to the farm have been very peep-ish and our whole world is now totes adorbs. This kind of space filling is fine by us.

Let’s talk about the weather once more, and the seasons.

These recent weeks brought us freezing (truly freezing, not just hyperbole-cold-Oklahoma but actually sub-zero) temps and plenty of frost and ice. We fought off the despair of unceasingly gray, gloomy skies, wore layer upon layer of clothing but still shivered, and ate weird food that barely ever warmed us up. The tail end of February is always bizarre, right? Doesn’t it feel longer than all the rest of winter, combined?

Then, on Monday evening, the clouds parted suddenly and the sun shone on the farm just long enough to accomplish a dramatic stab of gold and bronze, fighting off the gloom, literally moments before dusk. We were sitting in the east living room when it happened, and the change in atmosphere deserved its own Vivaldi soundtrack.

Then Tuesday was ever so slightly more pleasant for being outside, and sunset on Wednesday took my breath away. This morning, before seven, I saw the eastern sky do that kaleidoscope twist where all of her pink and apricot colors churned and shone and cast a shimmering mix of lavender and yellow onto the basin of the western sky, just across our pond. It happens some days in a more kinetic way than others. It’s truly magical, and I love it.

Also, our only two adult roosters are fighting a little bit, no matter that they have a harem of seven gorgeous hens to share.

The pine forest has been weighed down with hefty flocks of visiting, screaming black birds.

The earthworms are wriggling into the warmest top layers of soil and compost.

The horses are shedding like crazy.

The bees are foraging on dried manure and dandelions.

And my heart just knows.

What I’m saying here, friends, is that springtime is happening. We knew it would!

All the seed trays, empty raised beds, and future watermelon patches will soon be ready for action.

Until then, more space making, More reading and cleaning and working and loving. More teaching ducklings to swim (like they need lessons) and more encouraging German Shepherds to appreciate every single romp outdoors, because the freeze is over, at long last.

A quick, gentle word about optimism, and this darling snuggling photo of Handsome with Maddie:

At our friend Maddie’s recent high school performance of Shrek, one song stood out to me and actually kind of hit me like a marshmallow sledgehammer. The character Fiona was singing a funny lament about how many years she had been locked away in her tower, about for how very long she had been wishing for her prince to rescue her (insert your own long-awaited miracle at this point). Then in the scene when it finally happens, when Shrek finally comes to release her from her bondage, she proclaims, “I knew it would happen TODAY!”

TODAY. Fiona knew, all those days and years leading up to her big moment, that her answer would come. She surrounded herself with evidence of other princesses and their unique moments of redemption. As her own waiting and captivity stretched on, she may have felt discouraged sometimes but still knew in some funny, weird way that it would happen today. The only detail missing was exactly which today it would be. And so, with that deep knowledge, she never gave up.

Okay, I will leave that with you for a while, to marinate. Please get back with me and share your thoughts. The whole notion that today is all we have, that this moment is all there ever is, that presence and attention are powerful, well, it will not let go of me. And it all leads me to crave more space. And I knew that springtime would eventually happen, that it would happen on some unknown today. And I know that all of our hardest-yearned for prayers will also be answered, on some very special today that is very much worth waiting for.

A final thought about Fiona? She waited, and she trusted, but her answer was still a miraculous surprise. Remember? It was not exactly what she imagined: It was far better. So friends, let’s stay open to the shock and trembling joy of all that is possible in our lives. Let’s crate and hold space for whatever is coming. And then relax back into the present moment.

I love you. I wish you only the best of every detail. Please come visit our baby peeps before they grow up.

“Past and future veil God from our sight.
Burn up both of them with fire.”
~Rumi
XOXOXOXO

humpday headlines

Hello and happy Wednesday!! Life at the W is clicking right long, and I have a handful of thoughts to share in case you are cuddled up and in the mood to read. This blog post will be like my favorite outfits: Nothing matches, but it all feels right.

001 My friend Christina at Little Sprouts Learning is a genius. This past week she shared a natural solution for repelling the dreaded squash bugs: white radishes! Also this week I was reminded that starting a squash crop earlier than usual can give the vines a jump on their enemies’ life cycles. This strategy is simple, and it could give a bigger overall yield for the summer; we just have to have some late frost protection plans in our back pockets.

squash bugs… the bane of my garden existence… (2014)

002 Next week is Mardi Gras, and depending on how social plans shake out I might bake our King Cake this weekend. Rather than pull ideas from the internet, I decided to lean comfortably on a recipe from a little book I snagged a few years ago in the actual French Quarter, at my favorite used book store. King Cake is lot more like a yeast bread than cake, which means it might scratch this sourdough craving I can’t kick. Also? I am a lot better at baking bread than cake, as the following photo demonstrates:

003 Is it watermelon season yet? If not, can everyone please stop posting watermelon photos online? And can the grocery stores please stop selling cubes of the red fruit in plastic boxes for one million dollars, even though they probably taste like chewy tap water? Ok cool. On a happier note, I have ordered some fancy watermelon seeds for a new patch this year, wahoo!!

3 cheers for free shipping!

004 I want you to come see some improvements we are making to the farm! One visual treat is the east exterior side of the big barn, the side you see just as you pull your car up and around the gravel driveway:

It’s a happy work in progress, and I love it! The mural, hand painted by my favorite white collar-hobby farming-renaissance man, has been here a while, but we recently added that red “W” up top and have started rearranging a collection of miscellaneous signs, hubcaps, and license plates. Soon, those two plastic trough planters will be overflowing with sunflowers, cosmos, and maybe hollyhocks and trailing SPV, and the ground below will be crawling with fruit. This is where I’ll grow watermelons and a pumpkin patch this year. My thinking is that, compared to the front field, this area between the house and the horses gets a lot more daily foot traffic, so the deer are less likely to sneak in and rob us and I am less likely to forget to do the weeding and watering. Bam.

005 My husband started a Keto diet on January second, and I have a lot of feelings about it, ha. Since March is “National Nutrition Month,” I will save my thoughts for a post then. Until then, light a candle for me. (I am kidding, it’s fine. But seriously. Send haaaaalllp.)

006 Unrelated, or perhaps very related, I have continued on the fitness path of trading lots of miles each week for lifting (baby) weights), and I feel surprisingly great. It’s funny how you have to convince yourself that running less is totally allowed. I am ever so slowly shedding some fat and feeling stronger and leaner, head to toe. What’s even more exciting is that my aerobic fitness is improving, too. I grab faster intervals when I decide to, run more consistent tempo workouts, and finish virtually every run with energy to spare. Zero plantar pain and better endurance, both very good side effects. The slow, slight fat loss is just a bonus so far. I attribute healthier, happier feet to building stronger hips and lower abs. This makes all the difference to mileage goals, for me: Should I eventually commit to a marathon, I could not increase volume much with blistered heels and and screaming plantar. So, for the foreseeable future, baby weights a few times per week will stay in rotation with those glorious, refreshing miles. This has all been really good mental conditioning, too, this constant sense of missing out on how all my running friends are preparing. (Boston and OKC races are right around the corner!)

007 Winter is making a few unwelcome encores around here, but it’s still February, after all, and even an early spring should not be expected until sometime in March. We consciously grab hold of and enjoy every warm, gorgeous afternoon with which we are gifted, and we try to make really good use of the cold, grey days in between, complaining as little as our worn out, heat-loving spirits will allow. Soon enough, as last weekend demonstrated, we will be outside working so long and so exhaustively that this hibernation season will seem far off again and quite foreign. (February always seems so bizarre while we are in it and so far away once we escape. And it’s so short! Weird.) Oh, and how’s this for God having a sense of humor? This morning as we listened to another bitter cold weather forecast and tried to guess its duration, I flipped open my devotional and read this scripture from Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power.” Ha! OK, ok, I get it. We can do zero to affect the weather, and there are greater things at play here. So we might as well just smile and make the most of it!

008 It’s Pisces season, okay? Spring is just so close. Let’s embrace a little magic and fluidity, and let’s welcome our intuition to the fling. What fling? The spring fling, of course.

Despite all the intensity of Pisces season, it’s also one of the most romantic and glamorous times of the year.

mindbodygreen

009 Please go read my friend Katie’s blog update on her garden. She and her husband work together in their Oklahoma City backyard to cultivate a space for flowers, culinary wealth, artwork, chickens and fresh eggs, grandchildren, and gobs of romance. They sound a lot like us, minus the grandchildren, ha! And we hope to accept their sweet dinner invitation soon!

010 What if the entire shade garden could be a spacious, concentric salad garden? All lettuces and kales, radishes, maybe some peas and… What else? Nasturtiums? Pansies? Cabbage! I want lots of food here to mix with the perennial coral bells, azaleas, and hydrangeas. The last couple of summers I accidentally grew too many tall sun lovers near the edge, so they not only visually blocked most of the expanse; they also leaned over dramatically to find the light. It was fun for a while, but it made mowing weird. And it eventually was just… confusing.

011 Have you read the Eckhart Tolle book, The Power of Now? My sister Ang recommended it to me, and I crave some discussion. So good. And much needed in my life. Thanks lady!!

That is it for my headline collection today, unless perhaps you are into discussing pregnancy scares for women in their mid forties? No? Ok, carry on. Have the loveliest evening possible! And don’t hate the cold too much. It really is almost over. Remember we are counting it all joy!! All of it!

“Even when the sky is heavily overcast,
the sun hasn’t disappeared.
It’s still there on the other side of the clouds.”
~Eckhart Tolle
XOXOXOXO

Everybody, Always by Bob Goff (book review & some encouragement)

Oh friends, have you read this book yet? Or do you follow the author anywhere online? He offers plenty of encouraging, challenging stuff in highly digestible format, on Instagram for example. In fact, I think that Bob Goff once wrote a study series for the You Version Bible app, which is what put him on my radar, long before I knew about his books. Love Does is next for me to read, though it was first for him to write. Okay. I have been meaning to talk to you about this for several weeks. My friend Kellie and I read it at the same time, just after Christmas, and now every time we see each other, at least one of us makes an excited reference to something in the book. Our husbands haven’t read it yet, but after so many weeks of summary and discussion they have a pretty good idea of its contents.

There’s a whole funny story about this moment that will probably lose all its humor in translation so just trust me here.

The book is just 223 pages long and divided into 23 stand-alone chapters that read more like parables from the author’s own life. Sometimes the stories connect, as is bound to happen when they are true; but as Kellie once noted, you can drop in and read a chapter here and there, sporadically and not necessarily in order, and still glean plenty of richness, without losing any sense of continuity. It’s neither a serious nor a studious book, though I took lots of notes and highlighted with abandon. Goff’s style (oh heck let’s be on a first name basis with the guy… I am pretty sure he wants it this way…) Bob’s style is folksy, affable, and casual, though he is highly educated and worldly enough. He refers to characters in is life over and over again as his friends, so much so that by the end of the book I was wondering how he qualifies that word.

Is it a Christianity book, or a spirituality book? I would say without a doubt, that Everybody Always is written with a Christian teaching but is approachable enough for readers from any discipline. It’s not so much about declaring right and wrong as it is about inclusion. About embracing and showing love to, well, everybody you see, all of the time. Bob presses us with bear-hugs into God’s extravagant grace (page viii) and powerful Love, and he shows us through his own life experiences how Jesus is Love and how Love is a verb and how all people in the whole world need and deserve it, no matter what. Kind of the opposite of tribalism, unless you are of the mind the entire human race is one big tribe.

One of my favorite themes from Everybody, Always is the recurring phrase, “People who are becoming Love…” Bob uses this to illustrate all kinds of messages. He starts one sentence after another with these words and finishes with examples of how humans can make meaningful efforts for transformation, for generosity, for greater openness. And it got me to relax deeply. It takes the pressure off, that old expectation for absolutes, that we are either good or evil, all at once; and it affirms the opportunities we all have for being, sort of, “in process.” I really, really groove that. Bob never lowers standards for Christian excellence or for good, basic human citizenship; he just acknowledges that some changes, especially the permanent kind, are gradual. Becoming Love. How beautiful. Here are just a few such turns of phrase…

People who are becoming love experience the same uncertainties we all do. They just stop letting fear call all the shots.

People who are becoming love want to build kingdoms, not castles. They fill their lives with people who don’t look like them or act like them or even believe the same things as them. They treat them with love and respect and are more eager to learn form them than presume they have something to teach.

People who are becoming love are with those who are hurting and help them get home.

Let’s spend some of our abundant energy on spiritual evolution and on growth, and let’s abandon the weird need to be perfect, both for ourselves and for each other. Let’s see our shortcomings, remember that God meets us there, and chase after solutions with Love.

So many anecdotes stand out to me, all these weeks later.

One is the chapter about Carol, the neighbor for whom Bob and his family threw an actual parade that became a . She was also at the heart of a fantastic walkie-talkie story. Carol made a brief appearance in the book but made a deep impact on me. The same must have been true for the Goff crew, that Carol was only in their life for a short time but in their hearts forever: “We found ourselves in the blast radius of her stunning love and kindness.” Wow.

And then there was the airport terminal employee who was so loving to all strangers and passersby and with whom Bob learned to cultivate a friendship in a series of just three minute interactions. Kellie and I had a lot to exchange about this!

Bob’s dad and the pickup truck that needed oil and then the homeless man who slept in it. Such a layered parable!! I cannot tell it better than the author does.

The witch doctors. Man. If you read this book (please do) and have the heart to discuss, I would really like to hear your thoughts on how this particular story goes.

Handsome and I, together with Kellie and her husband Mickey, have been working privately on some exciting projects these past several months. Along the way we have socialized and eaten dozens of amazing meals together, talking deeply with each other about things God has brought to our attention. Some of it has been difficult. Most of it has been unbelievably beautiful. We have prayed deeply with and for each other and our loved ones. We have enjoyed some clear and vibrant direction from God along the way, too, in addition to innumerable answers and unexpected refinement.

This is our tiny little, happy, adventurous, loving, miracle seeking church.

We are trying, in our own ways, to build a little community. And after reading The Book of Joy mid-winter, then watching The Kindness Diaries, this book’s appearance was well timed. This sentence soaked into my bones regarding our tiny little community:

Our friends do things like this for us. They help us see the life Jesus talked about while giving it to us in smaller pieces- sometimes just a teaspoonful at a time.

The book is not only about human relationships, either. Everybody Always also points the reader continuously back to God, over and over again back to the true source of Love and grace. Extravagant grace, let’s remember. And it edges out our human tendency for punitive judgement. “Shame makes us leave safe places. It mutes our life and our love. It’s the pickpocket of our confidence.”

Something new in my faith walk this year has been flexibility and trust, on a daily basis, not only with the mammoth, sometimes abstract feats. I have felt God urging me to relinquish control over comfortable routines and lean into the tiny unknowns with more joy, like He wants me to be open to surprises. Toward the end of the book, a chapter about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro really spoke to me. And the messages were all linked intimately back to my many visits to Colorado with Jocelyn. I will never forget climbing those Estes Park mountains and scrambling up giant rocks as she gave me verbal cues and as we both gulped in nature’s beauty. “When you’ve got a guide you can trust, you don’t have to worry about the path you’re on.” And this… “We’re all going to trip as we try to follow Him through the difficult terrain of our lives. But when we do, we’ll bump into Him all over again. Faith isn’t a business trip walked on a sidewalk; it’s an adventure worked out on a steep and often difficult trail.” Yes!!

She cut wild sage for me before I left for home on that first trip, and I still have it. xoxoxo

Ok I am gonna wrap this up. I hope this has sparked your appetite to read Everybody, Always. If you do, or if you already have, please send me a note with your thoughts! Or comment below! It is all such great food for discussion. Thanks so much for reading this alongside me, Kellie, I love you!!

“When joy is a habit,
Love is a reflex.”
~Bob Goff
XOXOXOXO