Lazy W Marie

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

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friday 5 at the farm, late may 2022

May 27, 2022

Hello friends, happy Friday! And happy Memorial Day Weekend to everyone stateside. In Oklahoma, we are bouncing back from a week of luscious rainfall and unseasonably cool temperatures, and we are happy about all of it. The relief, the return to normal, the weird rhythm. Our pond is brimming, my rain barrel is full, and the gardens and pastures are deeply hydrated but not flooded. I think the four leggeds were growing weary of sheltering in place, haha, but they are now luxuriating in abundant sunshine, so no worries.

Little Lady Marigold enjoying breakfast at daybreak, with Klaus supervising
(look closely in the distance).

Here’s a short and sweet Friday Five at the Farm to catch us up.

ONE: The pizza garden is as planted as it will be for a while, and everything is growing measurably, especially since the rain. I need to do some more weeding and distribute more compost and shredded oak leaves, but overall I am thrilled with how this little experiment is progressing. It actually almost looks like a giant green pizza, ha!

TWO: I am happy to report that Zoom, our little pandemic hatchling, is now laying eggs reliably. She provides several small, bantam sized, off-white eggs per week, and I am so proud of her. I am sad, however, to report that the three little peeps who hatched this Mother’s Day have since perished. One by one, the broody hen who hatched them brought them out to learn normal chicken things, and one by one they did not survive. Next time we have a clutch warming, I will prepare a nursery like we did in the old days, to ensure their safety. Sometimes letting nature take its course works out; sometimes it does not.

THREE: Did I tell you yet that Little Lady Marigold received her first ever shearing? Approaching her Lazy W anniversary, we wrangled her up (Klaus helped), got her into the bright yellow halter, and imposed on her a haphazard but weather-appropriate, all over haircut. She looks so much smaller now, I can’t believe it. Her svelte little lamb figure really accentuates her menacing stick legs. And the heaps and mountains of sheared off wool are an amazing sight. I keep intending to give it to the chickens for their nesting boxes, but I don’t want to stop looking at it.

FOUR: Family fun abounds! Handsome recently brought home some exciting news from the Commish which heralds a brand new chapter not only for him but also for the entire agency, and I am so proud and happy. We are also preparing for a big party here next month, to host the entire Public Utilities Department. I love any big party, and I am beyond excited to see old Commish friends and meet new faces! Also, Jess and Alex are doing great, working hard as usual and spending time with us often, for which we are so thankful. Alex’s mom sweet mom Araceli was in town recently and joined us at the farm for dinner al fresco. The pups swam, and the weather was perfect. That same weekend, we gathered with dozens more friends and family to celebrate my sister Angela’s birthday and her seven years of sobriety. Our other little sister, Gen, flew in from LA to surprise her, as did Ang’s son and daughter in law. Over Father’s Day next month, Mom and Dad will be in Spain visiting my brother Joe and his family, so we had a small brunch for them while so many of us were together. SO much to celebrate right now! We are soaking it up. Letting the joy settle deep in our bones.

FIVE: Thank you to everyone who has been following the interviews! I sure had fun writing about my husband, and I have several more folks lined up. This next series will be about individual people I just happen to find fascinating, not necessarily pandemic questionnaires like last year. If you know someone who would be a fun read, send me a note!

Okay, that’s it for today. Gardening never stops, the animals keep me busy, I never have enough time to read all the books I want to read, and life is jaw-droppingly beautiful right now. I hope you feel the same. Thanks for checking in!

My dreams are tied to a horse that will never die
~Sting
XOXO

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Filed Under: UncategorizedTagged: animals, carpe diem, choose joy, daily life, family, friday 5 at the farm, gardening, gratitude, hobby farm

friday 5 at the farm, april 1, 2022

April 1, 2022

Hello friends, and happy Friday to you! Spring has 100% sprung at the farm, and I am staying pretty busy these days. As usual I have more stories to share than time to write them, but how about an old fashioned Friday 5 post, just to timestamp?

(1) SCARLETT: As of today, our precious adopted calf has officially been with us for four weeks. I could tell you at least thirteen stories from every single one of those days, she has so generously filled our home with love and dimension. She has the sweetest, most trusting, most innocent spirit (with eyes to match), and her frostbite injuries don’t seem to faze her too much (more updates on her in a separate post). Happy one month at the W, Little Miss!

(2) GARDENS & PROPERTY FACELIFTS: I can say with confidence and excitement that spring has sprung here. The redbuds and fruit trees are frilled with bright, tissue paper blossoms, the tulips and daffodils are showing off their Easter best, the hydrangeas and blackberry vines have sprouted tentative little green leaves, and one room of our house is overtaken with seed trays, heat mats, and grow lights. The seed sowing, misting, watching, reorienting, and misting again has been fun. I love the rush of “new life” energy this time of year. Outdoors, besides garden cleanup and planting a few beds of leafy greens and snow peas, I have enjoyed flipping, emptying, and refilling the three compost systems as often as natural decomposition allows it. A few days ago I discovered baby snakes had hatched in one compost bin, which is always a sure sign that warmth is here to stay. Handsome has been moving sapling pine trees to a new wildflower meadow for a privacy screen, and he is reconfiguring some of the pathways and driveways leading from the gravel drive to the lawn near the yurt, hoping to make circling through easier and prettier. Also, on a whim last weekend, he painted two large garage doors glossy black, to match other accents on our house and car shop. It looks so much better, I can’t believe we didn’t do that years ago! Love the black with our turquoise front door and lots of garden color, especially right now while the Jane magnolia is in bloom.

(3) SHEPPS: Velvet and Lincoln are visiting the farm this week, and we have been having some fun! They are all aging slowly and appreciate a good nap (as pictured below), but between naps they still play and romp with lots of puppy energy. Velvet has delighted us with a brand new surge of affection for Handsome, a privilege for which he has been bargaining all these (nearly) seven years.

(4) BOOKS: Because I am elbow deep in two heftier than usual writing projects, I am not reading anything new right now. Instead, in spare moments, I am rereading chunks of The Well Gardened Mind by Dr. Sue Stuart Smith. Chapter six is especially mouthwatering, all about the culture of gardening versus farming and the value of growing things for pleasure before necessity. Gardening to thrive, in other words, not merely survive. It’s a theme popping up everywhere I look lately, and it feels important. In a few weeks we will be hosting a dinner discussion for The Book of Hope. Very excited about that.

(5) CAR SHOW: Last weekend we (meaning my husband, ha! but I did bring donuts and a picnic and keep Klaus entertained) helped our friend’s daughter and her college group host a charity car show in Edmond. It was the most beautiful day to be outdoors, and we so enjoyed seeing car show friends we hadn’t seen in a while. He trailered the Batmobile fir display, too, which is always a good time. The group did an excellent job pulling everything together, and they raised several hundred dollars for their school’s campaign to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network. Hopefully it was the first of not only their ongoing car show efforts but also our own packed car show season. We have really missed it these past two years!

Okay friends, what’s going on in your world? Are you primed and ready to grow something beautiful this year? Are you deep cleaning your house or maybe wrapping up spring break? What are you reading these days?

Thanks for checking in. See you soon for Scarlett stories and a brand new interview.

Redeem the Time
XOXOXOXO

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Filed Under: UncategorizedTagged: carpe diem, choose joy, farm life, friday 5 at the farm, gardening, gratitude, Klaus, scarlett

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

January 28, 2022

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

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Filed Under: UncategorizedTagged: ducks, farm life, friday 5 at the farm, gardening, Klaus

friday 5 at the farm, random animal stories

December 17, 2021

Friends, hello, hi! I have less than 38 minutes to type a blog post before it’s time to get ready for a double date. So here we go. And there will be errors. There Will Be Errors. (If you repeat that to yourself dramatically it sounds like a movie title.)

we keep it classy

Story Number One: Remember the brassica garden that was eaten voraciously by the chickens in, maybe September? Well the plants there have bounced back. They have bounced back so hard, you guys, and in fact now have cabbages and cauliflower growing enormously. Nature is amazing! I posted more about this on Instagram a few days ago. I am so happy. That particular garden healing has brought me lots of hope for spiritual battles.

Story Number Two: Today while refreshing nesting box hay and refilling waters in the chicken coop, a brick-red rooster strutted up to me, blinked sideways in that skeptical, sneering (but lovable) poultry way, and proceeded to sip fresh cold water straight from the garden hose. From the hose, you guys, like a little kid! Klaus saw this and gently snooted the rooster away to enjoy his own slurp, as this is his domain, thank you very much, along with the rest of the farm and all fun activities.

Story Number Three: I have dropped the ball on decorating one animal every day for Advent, but we are giving them all as much Christmas cheer as is farmishly possible, and we are definitely celebrating Advent ourselves in sweet little ways every day. Anyway. Ever since the day that Dusty got his fancy mane bows, Chanta has been hinting that it is, in fact his turn. He is sweetly aggressive about it, so I predict a braiding session this weekend.

Story Number Four: Another chicken coop story, but about the ducks. While I was in there cleaning up, the interior door fell open too far. We have the ducks separated for safety, and the chickens and roosters are free to pass back and fort, over the half wall. Mike Meyers Lemon followed me to the goose-occupied half of the coop yard and started freaking out because he was to far from Rick Astlee. He was too upset to allow me to just pick him up, so I walked a wide, slow circle behind him to give him a chance to see the open door. Meanwhile, Rick, from the other side of the pallet wall divider, started quacking in a higher and higher tone and more and more rapidly, just exactly the way Mike used to call for him last summer, when Rick would occasionally be lost at sunset. Who remembers that story? GAH! These ducks. They love each other. They are bros! Duck Bros! Rick’s quacking lured Mike with loving precision through the open door, and Klaus followed behind with much chuffing and a big, toothy grin.

Story Number Five: My husband outdid himself with Christmas lights and inflatables this year, and that’s saying a lot because he does a great job every year. We wake up to colorful cheerfulness early every morning, and we see it before bed too, thanks to the magic of programmable timers. Yesterday Klaus and I played fetch well after sunset, in the dark, with confetti lights and lasers flying all over him and the lawn. I loved it so much, and I loved it all over again today when I saw a bit of the action of security footage ha! More modern conveniences bringing us joy.

Ok that’s it! Time to scrape the chicken, umm, debris from my earlobes, find a clean tank top, and spritz some Febreze on my jeans. It’s Friday night in the big town! (Locals, name the meteorologist who used to say that)

How many errors did you find? Please check in soon for a whole post about JOY!!

ALL IS MERRY AND BRIGHT
XOXOXOXO

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Filed Under: UncategorizedTagged: animals, carpe diem, chickens, farm like, friday 5, friday 5 at the farm, Joy, Klaus

friday 5 at the farm, life lately

October 1, 2021

1. Doing: We just wrapped up the 2021 Oklahoma County Master Gardeners’ Tour! After receiving the invitation earlier this summer, Handsome and I have spent lots of time and energy preparing for a bus full of talented gardening friends to visit the Lazy W. I have really been missing the community, and it was an honor to be considered, so we dove in and had a blast!

Of course in true Oklahoma fashion, our long standing drought busted wide open the very morning of the tour, with a cold front and all day thunderstorms. Ha! But Jess and Alex joined us to help with guests, and we made some very happy memories despite being soaked. Also in gardening and activities news, I spent a day last week with my friend Mer. We drove to Stillwater to see her stepdaughter Ash as well as tour the OSU campus botanic gardens and the Bustani grounds. The gardens were deeply inspirational, and time with a dear friend refreshed my soul. In between these two events, gardening and farm cleanup has been the name of the game. With heavy rain predicted again tonight, I won’t be watering for a while, and all the weeding and mulching is caught up, so everything gets a little rest, including me.

May be an image of 2 people, people standing, outdoors and tree

2. Reading: I have started listening to audio books, which is a big departure for me. I have always been kind of a snob against them and will gladly explain why if you care. My first foray was a pitiful necessity: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a current group project with a deadline. I was muddling and suffering through the five-million-page book version and realized I would not finish it in time to participate in the remote book club discussion, and I have really wanted to participate with this particular group for a while, so I broke down and paid for an Audible subscription. Friends, it was a lifesaver worth every penny of the fourteen dollar fee. The talented narrator helped me differentiate the dozens of (IMHO) underdeveloped characters with complicated Russian names (I was not forming crisp images as I read). Plus, being so busy with tour prep these recent weeks, I had a hard time sitting still to read. at all Audio helped me power through a classic, and I am glad for it. Since finishing The Idiot, I decided to keep up the audio momentum during housework and cooking hours. Yesterday I started listening to Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Nice palate cleanser, you know? As for actual reading, my whole body and soul are still vibrating from The Well Gardened Mind by Dr. Sue Stuart-Smith. I’ll have a full review for you soon. More exciting than my review, though, is that this weekend we are hosting an in person discussion brunch at the farm! Several friends read it along with me, and we are lucky enough to have snagged the author for a Zoom interview!! I cannot wait to meet her online, ask her some questions, and lavish her with affection for her gorgeous piece of work. And yes I will share more of that experience here, next week.

3. Eating: I personally cannot get enough eggs, Greek yogurt, and walnuts lately. Sounds pious, but I don’t mean it that way. These cravings have been as real and insatiable as tortilla chips and guacamole or dark chocolate and almonds. This week we have enjoyed a couple of different versions of homemade enchiladas and seared jalapenos, which was fun with friends here for dinner, plus one new sugar cookie recipe, which I baked strictly to fragrance the house on our first rainy day. Sadly, since Handsome is requesting fewer sweet treats these days, I have no idea what to do with all of my autumn baking energy. It is soon going to be an actual problem. Friends and neighbors should begin expecting anonymous deliveries of apple cider donut bread, pumpkin muffins, brookies, and apple-cinnamon rolls.

4. People News: My never-stop-working husband just passed his fifteen year mark at the Commish! This feels like such a pretend milestone, as if the real one is much more substantial, because each of those fifteen years has been so packed with drama, uphill battles, stunning accomplishments, and paradigm-shifting life changes, both for us and for his professional community. So much history under his belt, and all while our own story rages on in the periphery. We were practically newlyweds when he started and have built the farm during those years! Overall, what a beautiful whirlwind of endurance and growth. And a great portion of it has contributed to the enrichment of our marriage, for which I am so thankful.

5. Animal News: Little Lady Marigold is still sweetly aggressive and absolutely stuck on her morning routine. She also continues to be people shy. Did she even peep around the corner during the tour? No, but Meh made lots of new friends that day. We overheard some ladies pitying him for being so wet, and he ate it right up. The two flocks are still cooped up until my gardens heal a bit more from their recent reign of free-range terror. Klaus misses his bird friends, so I let him in the big pen every day to play. We are, not surprisingly, collecting a glut of eggs again.

Okay, more stories and updates soon! I would love to know what’s happening in your world. Are you sinking into autumn where you live? Are you baking or decorating or gardening accordingly? Anyone running a fall marathon? I’m not, but I am slowly ramping up mileage and feeling better than ever.

Thanks for checking in, over and out!

“For it is the body, the feeling, the instincts,
which connect us with the soil…”
~Carl Jung
XOXOXO

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Filed Under: UncategorizedTagged: autumn, daily life, friday 5 at the farm, friends, garden tour, gardening, gratitude, OKMGA

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Hi! I'm Marie. Welcome to the Lazy W. xoxo

Hi! I’m Marie. This is the Lazy W.

A hobby farming, book reading, coffee drinking, romance having, miles running girl in Oklahoma. Soaking up the particular beauty of every day. Blogging on the side. Welcome to the Lazy W!

I Believe Strongly in the Power of Gratitude & Joy Seeking

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Lazy W Happenings Lately

  • river not reservoir June 5, 2022
  • friday 5 at the farm, late may 2022 May 27, 2022
  • BW part 3: take me to bed or lose me forever May 17, 2022
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"Edit your life freely and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all." ~Nathan W. Morris

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