Lazy W Marie

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

little lady marigold xoxo

Little Lady Marigold is the precious, diminutive, wild sheep I have always wanted. She is opinionated, lucid, brave, and full of energy.

She got her fancy name by two strokes of beautiful timing. First, I asked Handsome and Jessica separately for name ideas, and within an hour of each other they both texted, “Little Lady.” Then I added “Marigold” because the day she arrived here at our farm was the first day my French marigolds bloomed that spring. So she became Little Lady Marigold, LLM for short.

Little Lady Marigold is a Shetland sheep, diminutive in stature but bold in spirit. Her fleece is mostly white or white adjacent, dirty after many months of growing free and wild, and her face and legs are coal black. Lovely. I cannot get enough of gazing into her domed eyes and slotted pupils.

LLM is lightning fast and agile, able to glide and bolt low and quick, in and around both trees and horse legs alike. She is skeptical and fussy and makes you earn her trust, which I respect. When Klaus is being just too much, she raises one of her stiffened front legs, tiny black hoof shining with anger, and bows her forehead as if to warn him of a good noggin ramming (which, in fact, she is very able to deliver). We call this warning the Stick Leg Treatment. It looks like a great, fluffy praying mantis preparing to do battle, and it almost always shoos Klaus and any other nearby animal, including her huge pasture mate Romulus the King of Llamas, right away. On the rare occasion that the Stick Leg Treatment does not work, she squares off, keeps that woolly head lowered, and charges forward in mean, fearless thrusts until her opponent is properly humiliated and retreats. No one has bested her yet, and she is the tiniest of all our animals, save the cats and chickens.

Nephews Greg and Connor wanted her way too much.
She can smell it. She eschews sincere desire.

Marigold was borderline feral when we first brought her here. It took many weeks of slow, quiet movements and cautious approaches to convince her to eat sweet grain out of my hands, and now she practically climbs my leg when I swing it over the gate to her enclosure. I love scruffing her pretty face and stroking her slender, knobby legs. Her hooves are unbelievably tiny! And that wool, you guys, oof!! It is voluminous and full of mystery (also sticks and dried leaves). If I have a lucky day and get to handle her enough, my hands feel oily and a bit slick from the lanolin. She is usually pretty content having the heaps of gray and white wool on her back scruffed. Or, perhaps this is the truth, there is so much there that she cannot always feel me scruffing her?

Speaking of that massive woolly burden, our Shetland sweetie is destined for a spring shearing this year, so I have begun desensitizing her to a halter, noisy with metal buckles, during hand feeding. I wear it on my wrist like a bracelet, making it necessary for her face to be almost up against it while she nibbles grain from my palm. Occasionally I jingle the buckle and flip the straps, so she gets used to seeing and hearing it while staying safe. She absolutely hates it, ha! But if this slow, steady process works, it will lead to her next level of elegance and domesticity and to my next life accomplishment. I’ll keep you posted.

Little Lady Marigold’s favorite song is Norwegian Wood by The Beatles, followed closely by Never Gonna Gove You Up by Rick Astlee, if I have just left the duck pond and chicken coop.  Soft songs. Easy words. Pretty things that cool her hot temper. She sleeps either beneath a wild cedar tree near the pond-facing hill or in her little shed. Also in the hay! Rather than calmly eat from the outer surface of a large hay bale, she burrows deeply in it, snoot forward, then naps in the tunnel she has eaten away. Upon waking she emerges with an ill balanced hay bonnet. I love this more than words can say. Which is another song she might like. I’ll try it.

Little Lady enjoyed a good, healthy, stress free week of winter here, for which we are so thankful. She is spicy and personable, and I just love her so much. If you ever visit the farm and want to meet her, don’t be shy! I’ll take you over and make the proper introductions. Just know that so far, my little sister Genevieve is the only other person who has successfully hand fed this animal. I think the secret is that Gen didn’t care that much. She lacked the stench of desperation most visitors emit, ha.

Okay that’s it for today! I just wanted to share some of my sheep love.

I hope you’re having a beautiful weekend filled with everything that refreshes your soul. Remember you are deeply and wildly loved, your potential is untapped, and your emotions and imagination have actual creative power in this world.

“Patience is passion tamed.”
~Lyman Abbott
XOXOXOXO

P.S. President Roosevelt also kept Shetland sheep, but one of his rams attacked several people and killed a small boy, so he had to relocate them all to Monticello. The End.

friday 5 at the farm: sometimes manure rolls uphill and Alexa, add body wash to the shopping list!

ONE: Sometimes manure rolls uphill, and compost is a miracle. If the field is quite dry and the breeze is strong enough, it is very normal for horse manure to roll uphill, away from my season. This phenomenon panicked me the first time I noticed it years ago. I thought it was one hundred percent paranormal. But I plan for it now. And, in case you’re wondering, this doesn’t really happen with llama manure. Also, ripening compost continues to amaze me with its winter-long incubation and promised garden magic.

TWO: Klaus temporarily smells like a human man.
Yesterday afternoon, and I cannot really explain how this started so just trust me, Klaus spontaneously joined me in the narrow, one person shower, upstairs. Normally I bathe him in the guest bathtub downstairs, where his proper dog shampoo is handy and a wide tiled floor (no carpets to soak or closets full of clothes to splatter) keep the clean-up job well contained. Upstairs, unplanned, I quickly grabbed Handsome’s two-in-one men’s shampoo-body wash combo and (I truly regret this) squeezed and drizzled about half a cup of it generously all over my half wet, 140-pound surprise guest. I now believe that people shampoo is designed to lather a lot more than dog shampoo, and I see that I made the situation much worse by dispensing so much. Within moments we were both covered in heaps and heaps and mountains of darkly masculine-scented, ever expanding, unrelenting piles of bubbles and suds. It took at least fifteen minutes of strategic spraying and rinsing to calm the fury of that lather. He just kept looking up at me like he had pulled off the biggest prank. Afterwards I used five clean beach towels to scrub away and absorb most of his wetness then blow-dried him while he smiled even more wolfishly and wagged his tail slowly. Now he smells like my husband, which is weird. But he is soft, and he loves it. He pranced around the house for hours like a shaggy, poofy, spiky black bear.

THREE: Waterfowl don’t know cold and will happily bathe in fresh water no matter the temperature. Even with nearly freezing air, our lone gander and two ducks thoroughly appreciate a fresh pool for swimming. They dive and splash and luxuriate blissfully, the same as they do in summer. It’s really quite a sight. I am still ruminating the puzzle of how to release them to free range again, for their safety and the safety of my gardens.

FOUR: People are complex and fascinating, and I have a new pandemic story coming soon! My friend and neighbor Mari shared her private pandemic experience with me, and as soon as we edit some details I will be posting that here on the blog. she is like a warm mug of good tea with honey in it. Then all of my pandemic interviews will be complete, and we will either embrace more or start on the book!

No photo description available.
Mari hand-wove this beautiful fabric basket and gifted it to me. I love it!

FIVE: I only have two new gardens planned this year. One is a pizza garden! I have wanted to do this for years, since my girls were small and my dad sent me a newspaper clipping about a farmer who did this in Yukon, and this year I’m finally going to make it happen here in Choctaw. It will be round in shape (pizza!), maybe twelve to fifteen feet across, with a tall bronze fennel (a nod to Italian sausage) growing in the center. From the fennel, it will be divided in wedges (like pizza slices, ha) with each section dedicated to a different pizza ingredient. Think… slicing tomatoes, peppers, parsley, oregano and basil, more paste and cherry tomatoes, what else? Maybe arugula! We should all team up to convince my husband we also need a dairy cow, so we can make fresh mozzarella. Then we should maybe grow wheat? This year’s second new garden space will be just for massive, colorful cut flowers, a sunflowers-and-zinnias patch, alongside the chicken coop just as you pull around the gravel driveway. Kind of across from the “Mural Garden,” where the okra went nuts last summer.

We are going to have so many different sunflowers this year xoxoxo

Okay friends, those are my updates for now! Good reading abounds too, and we have a wonderful Outreach project brewing for which we might ask a little help, but that will all keep for a few days. Please check in soon for Mari’s story! Tell me something random in your world, and happy weekend to you and yours!

“Even a rabbi should spend ten percent of his time
gardening and washing dishes and cooking
and tending to the basics of daily life.
There is something about it that connects you to other people.”
~Colin Beavan
XOXOXO

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