Lazy W Marie

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

a happy, messy look back at 2021

Closing out the year 2021, I feel maybe more wide-eyed and open-hearted than ever in my life, which is wonderful. I also feel a bit weirded out by how quickly time has been passing. Lots of my friends feel this way, too, about the speeding clock, and theories abound about why this is happening. Whatever the reasons, our days and months seem to be gaining momentum. In the New Year, my remedy for this sensation will be to schedule in more free time, more protected white space for play and spontaneity, and more rest days that I can redeem however I need to at that time, trusting in my overall work product. Trusting that life can and should contain more wiggle room.

Looking back over the past twelve months, I am in awe of all the hard work and dazzled by all of the intense Love. I am deeply grateful for the relief sent our way, for the grace supplied to handle difficulties we have never handled before, and for the fresh inspiration. I feel a gorgeous weaving together of sincere effort and desire, and it is thrilling.

As last year began, we spent time with Handsome’s cousin, Shane, and his beautiful little family, while they were in Oklahoma to bury Shane’s dad, Wes. It was a profoundly sad time but a happy reunion too, and we were thankful everyone was healthy and safe enough to be together. During their stay, Oklahoma was blanketed by snow and the farm was without power for several days, so that was definitely a memory maker! We did our best to cling to New Year’s Eve traditions and have fun outdoors when possible, and we just covered each other in love.

During that visit, while cooking dinner for the group, I received a phone call from Jessica that changed everything. She and Alex had just decided to get married! The engagement was no surprise to us, but their timeline was: They set a date exactly two weeks from the date of that phone call, ha! So we were thrown immediately into some of the most joyful, also the most feverish, most love-drenched planning and farm beautification days ever. Jessica and Alex were the picture of young love and true, warm-hearted family love. They deserve the world. As I type this, these lovebirds are fast approaching their first anniversary!

Handsome and his team at the Public Utilities Division made history with their unrelenting work and fierce, talented attention during Oklahoma’s Polar Vortex and all of the precipitating (no pun intended) energy crises. It was a long, cold, challenging season for them, and I am so proud. He coined the saying, “We’ll keep them alive today so they can hate us tomorrow,” and my smart husband got to be on television press conferences with Oklahoma’s favorite ASL translator. Who remembers this guy?? He was amazing.

We celebrated Easter outdoors with our local family!! The tulips and daffodils were blooming, the sun emerged with extra early heat, and everyone brought their pups. I remember feeling hope for normalcy, something even bigger than the seasonal dose of excitement springtime delivers.

Eventually vaccines rolled out, and we were thankful to partake. Beyond thankful for our health and our family’s health, thankful for the preservation of life so far. We know intimately that not everyone has been so lucky.

Sometime during the warm months last year, I cannot remember exactly when, we finally met some longtime neighbors and struck up a new friendship. Rex and Cathy live down the road from us, and their German shepherd (Max) is a neighborhood celebrity. It was with the excuse that Max and Klaus become buddies that we started talking, and soon enough we all just clicked. It turns out that their (now grown) daughter grew up as best friends with the little girl who grew up here, in our house at the Lazy W (but long before it was the Lazy W, ha)! Rex and Cathy have quickly become two of our favorite people. A very happy development this year.

If I look back on the gardening year of 2021, I will remember mostly flowers. Lots of different lilies, hydrangeas, zinnias and marigolds of course, some sunflowers, shady beds full of soft impatiens, blooming sage, and even roses. Gosh so many roses! I will also remember the castor bean plants that my running friend Mike gifted us in the form of bizarre, prickly, sappy little seed pods. The plants are ultimately sky-scraping, elegant monsters. I will also remember the okra. Oh good grief, those plants produced three times per day all summer long! Okra and tomatoes were the bulk of our little farm’s food production this year. My focus was more on flowers, to make sure we had lots of bouquets for our vow renewal. It was a fun diversion, but I’ll get back to food in 2022.

2021 was the year that we almost lost Rick Astlee, the bully duck, thanks to an attack by Johnny Cash, the bully goose; but Rick convalesced in our bathtub for two weeks and survived to enjoy a happy summer with his guide duck, Mike Meyers Lemon. Klaus was enraptured, and we were relieved. It was also this year that our chickens enjoyed a free range experiment, which we will repeat after winter, once I have figured out how to protect my gardens better.

In spring, Lady Marigold celebrated her first year with us. She has grow daily into a bossy little hand-fed, spoiled rotten, circle-zooming miss fancy pants. We lubb her.

Our nieces and nephews insist on growing up. Chloe has her driver’s license? Connor is speaking Spanish??

Our own beautiful kids are healing and growing in their own ways, both with and without us, proving that we are only vessels or conduits for God’s Love, not the source. He is always the Source.

We learned so much about friendship and family and social evolution, about teamwork and thriving in harmony. Community has taken on new and deeper meaning, as I know many of you will agree.

We celebrated out twentieth wedding anniversary with an outdoor vow renewal, which was definitely postponed once and almost postponed twice, for monsoon-level rainstorms! We were surrounded by friends and family and could not have felt happier or more in love.

Not much travel this past year, despite having tried. Three good trips were all cancelled at the last minute due to covid outbreaks or upswings, but we barely pouted at all. It seems like life at home, on this farm, with each other, has become so nourishing and relaxing that we recharge just fine, right here. We did make one quick getaway to the Palo Duro Canyon area in the panhandle of Texas, which was absolutely enchanting. We enjoyed that quick visit so much, we intend to make a longer adventure of it soon. Rent a cabin, go for long hikes, pack our own groceries to cook, have some no-cell-service kind of romance. We love that it’s a Klaus-friendly trip.

All the hardscape improvements we made to the farm during the first year of pandemic have held up, and this year I think we mostly just added gravel. Lots and lots of gravel, ha! We also bought a zero-turn-radius riding lawn mower, which makes life so much easier. We also hosted the Master Gardeners for a second time at the end of summer, also nearly derailed by a freakish monsoon, but gosh that turned out to be a wonderful memory maker too.

The fifth annual Lazy W Talent Show was a huge success! We hosted it in October and called it “Fright Night,” and everyone brought the Halloween vibes! So much fun. That will go down in history for us.

Mom and Dad hosted Thanksgiving this year, and Gen was in town, wahoo! We were missing Jocelyn, Dante and Deaven, and Joe and Halee and their magical boys (stationed in Spain right now). But we ate their share of turkey and pecan pie and stayed fixed in gratitude for everything and everyone. I will remember Thanksgiving Week 2021 as one especially full of games and laughter, team efforts and shimmering affection for each other.

Christmas was overall the quietest holiday of the year, and honestly we needed it to be that way. It felt restful and intimate, and it gave us time to just soak up Jess and her beautiful little family, and we slept a lot that weekend. My heart has felt comforted and joyful, just as the carol offers.

I ran one speck less than 2,121 miles this year, which means absolutely nothing except that I stayed healthy and consistent, uninjured and very happy, and overall a bit stronger thanks to more regular gym days. I have actual running goals for 2022, wahoo!

Of course there have been heartaches, there always are, and there always will be. But I feel content. Well seasoned. I feel good despite the hard times, or maybe in part because of them. God has grown us so much this year.

Happy New Year, friends. I hope your pain is eased and your joy is rekindled. I hope your faith is stronger than ever. And I hope your dreams begin to come true right before your wide open eyes.

“Open yourself to every possibility,
for there is nothing your heart can imagine
that is not so.”
~This Tender Land,
William Kent Kreuger
XOXOXOXO

and just like that…

Just now while doing breakfast chores, I was praying for Jocelyn and something wonderful happened.

((an old photo of the boys with fresh hay…xoxo))

For several days I have been aggressively and tediously flaking hay for the bachelors from what is perhaps the most tightly wound large bale I have ever seen in my life. It is also wrapped in not wire, not netting, but twine, and lots and lots of it. It’s like a five year old wrapped a gift with cheap tape. The blue nylon twine is buried and criss-crossed in deep crevices throughout the hay, making the already tight spiral of tangled dry grass nearly impossible to loosen neatly. Every day is a slow unraveling task. Chipping and shredding, really. Generally this task is kind of fun, actually, I’m not complaining. Raking hay can be therapeutic, like collecting manure for compost or pulling weeds. It’s a repetitive motion and gentle physical exertion that makes it easy to get lost in thought, or prayer. But the twine has been a frustrating block.

So today I was chipping away, flaking off small, not pretty, tufts of hay to slowly collect into heaps for the boys’ breakfast, praying for Jocelyn. Praying for her to remember the best moments between us, from childhood to Colorado and everything in between. Praying for her to feel needed and appreciated and valued, to feel safe and warm when she thinks of home, to separate trauma and fact and fiction, to resist and replace the brainwashing, to grow whatever seeds of love and hope and health are in her heart. I swung my straight metal rake again and again, and suddenly the tines caught another strong, skinny bit of blue twine. So I stopped to cut it apart. (So much twine you guys.)

As soon as my scissors snapped the twine, it popped apart like a champagne cork! And a thick, fluffy, luxurious band of soft hay collapsed at my feet. I don’t know if you have ever felt that, the release of more hay than you needed, but it is wonderful. Hay falling at my feet is one of my favorite sensations, maybe because it is so clearly proof of lushness and abundance. Every day I hope it will happen, but as you might imagine, this particular large bale has been stingy with the magic.

Anyway, today it did happen. I couldn’t believe how much gorgeous, sweet smelling hay was being trapped by a single strand of blue nylon twine. It really doesn’t make sense. It hit my very cold toes (three cheers for wearing flip flops in December), and I stared at the now very lopsided large bale. Then I collected the food into my big green basket and called Chanta, Dusty, and Meh over to feast.

It hit my heart that God has worked this way in my life over and over again.

He has many times released fears or shame or toxic relationships, or simply erroneous thinking, in one powerful godly breath, thereby triggering cascades of goodness in my life.

And He can do this with my girl, too. He can release her from everything in one moment. All that goodness in her life can cascade again with the snapping apart of one lie or one dark thought or one influence or one circumstance. She feels far away but also very close right now. I hope that the blue nylon twines keeping her bound up are snapped away gradually, gradually, then all at once. She deserves absolute freedom.

((a very happy day on my first trip to visit her in Colorado))

I feel momentum building and a deep peace growing. Thank you so much for your love and continued prayers. Please let me know how we can be praying for you too! Tell me what blue twine needs cutting, so the hay can fall thickly at your feet.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,
saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil,
to give you an expected end.”
Jeremiah 29:11
XOXOXO

ducks, geese, & some related marital advice

Rick Astlee the One Eyed Duck is, really and truly, living his best life. In many ways he seems worlds happier than before the incident last winter, and if you could spend a few days with him I think you would agree. His limited vision does mean that he tilts and leans hard toward the ground, so as to see where he is going with his one good eye; and this usually means he walks in circles. But more and more, he has been stretching those circles into longer and longer ellipses. He waddles in oblong, not too elegant loops, overlapping them with greater and greater distance every day. It is pretty amazing to watch his slow, steady progress and also watch him regain some independence. Mike Meyers Lemon, his smaller duck companion, the one with the wonky wing feathers, is genuinely concerned for his friend and tries to help. Mike calls rapid fire to Rick, “quack-quack-quack,” and Rick answers languidly, “quaaaaack” and Mike hurries closer, “quack-quack-quack,” like an earnest round of Marco-Polo, Mike stretching his shiny duck neck and waddling search of his circle-walking friend, bit by bit, voices easily distinguishable, until they are safely reunited. This drama happens throughout the day all over the farm, but the sweetest thing is watching it play out at sunset. We noticed that almost every night, if the south coop flock has retired to bed without Rick, the calling and fretting is even easier to hear. The trouble is that often Rick is fast asleep somewhere errant, deaf to Mike’s pleas. So either Handsome or I, accompanied by Klaus, scan the farm with a flashlight until we find Rick curled up beneath a cedar tree or within the hydrangeas, sometimes beneath the deck which is wildly troublesome, and then we carry him back to the coop. As Rick arrives safe for bedtime, Mike always loses his mind like a worried parent whose teenager has missed curfew. It is precious.

Snapshot from last winter, the Bathtub Days xoxo
When Rick Astlee makes it all the way to the shade garden on his own, we celebrate!

Meanwhile, Johnny Cash the lone gander has been heart breakingly attached lately. Attached in the neck-swooning, soft-whine-honking, gentle spirit way that MIA used to have with me. He has attached himself alternately to Chanta, our big gold and white paint horse, and Klaus, the world’s most loving German Shepherd. Johnny Cash is Mr. Lonelyheart when he wanders the farm alone, but when he is with his chosen buddy of the moment he could not be happier. Often we find him waddling after Chanta, Chanta’s thick tail swishing at him contentedly. Or we see the goose and his dog resting in the shade of a pine tree, supervising the chickens at scratch. A few days ago I brought Klaus a bowl of water plus a few golden Oreos to share with his friend, and his friend lunged at me, shooing me away from their bro space. Klaus didn’t seem to notice, which is good. Like, extremely good. I cannot think he would approve of any animal attacking his mama, not even his friends.

Out of the blue a few weeks ago, an old adage blew through my mind and settled with more clarity then ever: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” I suppose that most of my life have assumed it meant something like, what’s fair is fair, or maybe what’s good enough for women is good enough men, and vice versa. Like an obtusely framed anti-sexist thing? What have your believed it to mean?

I asked my husband his take on the expression, and he said, “You can’t have a double standard.” Exactly, right? No double standards.

Here a little extra I am putting behind the expression lately: What benefits one of the pair, benefits the pair itself. As if we are two streams feeding into one river, a thorough mix of waters, and the health and quality of each stream constitutes the health and quality of the river. That’s what I’m thinking.

My guy wrote this in the sand for me while on a business trip early in our marriage. xoxo

When we renewed our vows in July, one of the promises I added to our original ones was to remember that my husband is my teammate, not my competition. There’s a lot of private history behind that, and maybe I will share more as we go, but for today’s purposes I am just reflecting on how the better off he is, the better off we are. The happier and healthier I am, the more vibrant our union is.

20 YEARS!!

It’s not earth shattering new wisdom, but it is a timely reminder for me. And since my daily life is so filled with birds and bird behavior, the adage is likely to blow through my mind again and again. I appreciate this nodding wink from the Universe.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, because the goose and the gander are one. Their streams have fed willingly into the same river, and that’s very good. That’s really beautiful. It can be powerful.

In Estes Park a few years ago, before life changed in so many ways. We stayed in a cabin that opened to the river, rushing through snow and ice. Gorgeous!

Thanks for checking in, friends! May you have a buddy as devoted to you as Mike Meyers Lemon is to Rick Astlee, so that on the days your circular wandering leads you far from home at bedtime, that friend calls and calls to you until you are safe again. May you also find an unlikely friend, like our lone gander has found with both a horse and a dog. And if your stream mingles with any other, may all that water be clean and nutritious, with strong currents and sweet flavor.

XOXOXOXO

tuesday as winter throws its final tantrum

As I sit down for a few minutes to write this, we are bracing for one final cold snap, a late one by some measures but also weather that is completely on par with… (gestures widely to the entire past year). The overnight low in much of Oklahoma will likely flirt with 32 degrees for an hour or so, which is enough to trigger damaging frost. So I am happy to have not yet planted any tender tropicals. Today I spent a few hours moving soft, sweet smelling compost in gentle heaps and pillows to all the roses and brassica vegetables, plus the few cannas that have broken ground already. Fingers crossed for all my hydrangeas and viburnum; they are way to big to cover without letting the cloth touch the foliage. Nothing has bloomed yet, only leafed out, so that seems good.

Both yesterday and today while flipping and moving compost, I spied a baby snake. It is a silvery grey thing, narrow and shiny, fast as lightning. Had I not seen its tapered tail I might have guessed it to be an overfed earthworm. This is the time of year for both fat earthworms and skinny snakes. And they are both likely to be found in the compost.

The compost heap also produced a trio of humble, cheerful little squash plants, a wonderful surprise. I lifted them out of the fertile ground, along with some of that magical black stuff, and potted them up for transplanting soon into the proper garden. They will have a head start on all the other squash plants and maybe thereby escape the scourge whose name we dare not speak.

These are probably spaghetti squashes, based on the giant petrified skin I found nearby.

The strawberries I have been growing just for fun in small pots are, to my surprise, actually growing. And ripening! Look at this sweet pink baby.

About 2 dozen of these are growing in pots. Should I leave them, or put the in a garden bed?

Klaus kept me company all day while I moved compost and pulled wild greens for the chickens. We now have four big raised beds clean and fed in advance of planting this weekend. He played hard with Meh and Little Lady Marigold, then he came inside with me, visibly exhausted. He napped hard for about twenty minutes while I ate lunch and caught up on messages. Then we went upstairs to the Apartment to do the ironing. As I got started, he perched himself dramatically on the guest bed there and gave me the most pitiful face. Clearly, he had rested plenty and wanted to be back outside with his brother Meh. Or, and this is a legitimate possibility, he wanted Meh to come inside with us and play babies in the Apartment.

Can you see Meh far in the distance?

We are having soup tonight at the Lazy W, a cozy dinner to thaw our bodies, round out a hard working day, and embrace what will hopefully be the end of very cold weather for a very long time. I feel my heart thawing in so many ways, too. I feel the loosening of this vice grip of worry for our kids, and I feel the swell of peace and the energy of joyful work. All of it flowing.

“Well being is the only stream that flows.”
~Abraham Hicks
XOXOXO

goodbye pacino

Saturday morning I found Pacino deceased at the bottom of his overnight cage. We are in shock and hurting, filled with questions (we do not know what happened) and just plain longing for him to still be alive. Thank you for reading a little bit about his life, and if you can, we would love to hear your Pacino stories in comments, for our memories.

We adopted him as a hatchling the summer my husband turned 30. We were fairly newlywed still, and the girls were so small. He was a tiny, cobalt blue and bright yellow macaw with a short, perfect tail and enormous, cartoonishly out of proportion eyes that studied everything and everyone. Those eyes were set in two fields of vivid zebra-stripe face feathers.

We held him gently and stared at him in awe, sometimes all day long. The girls made pillowy nests for him inside cardboard boxes. His meals those first several weeks were liquid formula. He gobbled it up through flexible straws we held for him, and he bobbed and jerked his head and neck greedily to get every drop. This was a brief season, and a good, solid bonding one. I remember wondering during those weeks if this tiny, quiet, unmoving bird would ever walk or make a sound.

My husband named him Bobby Pacino, after two of his favorite actors, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. Known far and wide as just Pacino, over time his personality became famous, part of our own identity I suppose. More than extensions of us, he was his own person. The life energy he lent to our little family is hard to quantify.

He was a handful, for sure. Messy, noisy, demanding, sometimes uncooperative, occasionally violent but mostly in self defensive ways, and can I say loud and messy twice? Past infancy, macaws are neither quiet nor tidy creatures. His tail eventually grew long, his eyes gradually fit his frame, and his voice and energy levels exploded out of nowhere.

But! Pacino was also unbelievably smart and articulate, dazzlingly beautiful and prone to groom himself for long periods of time, but without ever plucking his feathers out. He was gregarious, appreciative, energetic, and easily one of the most affectionate animals I have ever met or even heard mention of.

Pacino was highly sensitive to moods and attitudes. He was perceptive, trusting some people quickly and others not at all. He bonded tightly to his favorite people. He sometimes held a small grudge against us when we travelled but always forgave us quickly and resumed the love fest soon. This was one of the times he delivered a hard bite. I was on the receiving end of it, and I can attest to how strong that shiny hooked beak was. But again, within minutes we were cuddling.

Pacino certainly found his voice, ha! My concerns over his quiet beginning were quickly dispelled. He squawked and sang and make all the Amazonian bird calls he was born to make, whether we wanted him to or not; and he mimicked and learned and spoke words and phrases in an eerily human voice, frequently joining in conversations and sprinkling in laughter at perfectly appropriate moments. Meaning, he got our jokes and was gracious with how funny we were or were not. We always loved for people to hear Pacino laugh (hahaha!) and ask us, “Was that the bird?” He sounded so much like a person. My god we miss that sound. Did you know that he learned to play Gone Gone Peekaboo in one afternoon? He was less than six months old.

A few years ago, with very little effort, I was able to catalog over 120 words and phrases Pacino had mastered then. On Saturday when we told Jessica the sad news, she suggested that we write another list now, to memorialize him. So if there’s a special thing he ever said to you, something that stands out, feel free to send it our way and we will add it to the list.

If you only saw photos of him online or met him at chaotic parties, then you never got to see Pacino at his best. He thrived on face to face interaction. He loved to be spoken to directly, and held, and he loved to dance. He has a particular swaying move which he did with his short legs stuck out stiff and his feathery shoulders kind of shrugging, his beak up in the air, yellow chest puffed out. We called it his Stevie Wonder dance, and we always sang to him, “I just called… to say… I love you…” We were usually rewarded with a happy operatic reply. We are going to miss that little ritual, hard.

He always appreciated a good snack and was adept to playing the “Do you wanna bite” game, going for up to twenty minutes of gasping, dramatic, sideways pacing without doing his part to close the circuit. Then he finally say his part, “I wanna bite!” and laugh.

Here is Pacino being kept happy with a candy cane. Behind him is a surprise Handsome painted for me. The French words mean, “Always Now and Forever.” xoxo

Speaking of snacks: Pacino loved cookies and crackers, apple cores, pizza, French fries (especially McDonald’s), raw jalapeño peppers, strawberries, grapes, any kind of batter he could lick off of a kitchen beater (holding it like an ice cream cone), peanut butter, and more. Mostly anything he could fish out of his Daddy’s mouth or steal from our plates. If he especially liked a food, his pupils would dilate wildly while he said, “Mmmmm do you like it??” Or sometimes, “Mmmm what is it?” The main food he never liked was carrots. If offered any size or shape of carrot he would immediately throw it to the ground, like it offended him a little.

Pacino moved here with us from the city and quickly acclimated to farm life. He learned the sound of the horses’ whinnies and would call to them by name, especially “Chaaaaa-ntaaaa!” and when we had Daphne’s foals, “Wah-PI!! Wah-PI!!” Once Klaus was here, Pacino was happy to encourage his little brother’s fetching efforts. He cheered generously and screamed “GET IT!” Klaus loved it, and we did too. He was also infinitely gentle with kittens and baby chicks. It was quite a thing to behold.

You will never see a gentler, more devoted surrogate mother who is a boy.

Once Pacino began to spend warm days outside with the chickens and ducks, his lifelong and very natural habit of scattering birdseed came in handy for social bonding. The hens quickly learned that standing beneath Pacino’s perch meant a generous scattering of more exotic fare than they normally received, and we thought Pacino enjoyed throwing stuff at them. I used to hate for him to do this in the house, because it meant constant sweeping of the wood floors. Jessica and Handsome once heard me reprimanding him, “Pacino this is not your mess castle!” Well, outside in the South Coop, it definitely was his Mess Castle, and he was King.

I have, in fact, complained a lot over the years about the mess and the noise Pacino generated, but today I would very much love to hear him scream obnoxiously again and say Hi momma and to clean up the floor and smell his powdery dander. I am ashamed for having ever complained, for having every assumed that he would always have him. We trusted his life expectancy too much. He was part of us, and losing him at all hurts more than we want it to. Losing him so suddenly, with no explanation, is leaving us in shock. Honestly, we expected to grow old with him. We expected to find a place for him to retire when we die.

He loved us, we felt it. He loved many of you, we saw it. We know that he was loved by so many of you, too. Thank you for that. Thank you to our friends and family who have sent the most wonderful messages, making it clear that Pacino was known as more than an unusual pet; he was a family member with an amazing, full spectrum personality. He is already deeply and sorely missed, and we shudder to think forward to all the things we will be doing here at the farm without him.

“Birds are as fragile as they are beautiful.”
~Brandy Wreath
XOXOXOXO