Lazy W Marie

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

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adieu to the queen of hearts

She was our brush with royalty.

((Little Lady Marigold, January, 2023))

She was diminutive, self assured and confident, fast as a cheetah, and studious. She was picky about who could touch her and gluttonous about food. I once couldn’t find her and thought she had liberated herself (again) from Retirement Village but found her buried, head first, inside her paddock’s enormous round bale of hay. She had burrowed into it by eating! She literally ate her way, all the way, to the center, and I just respect that so much. When she heard me calling, she casually backed out and popped her happy little head into the sunshine, all matted with hay, still chewing, and she looked at me. Nonplussed.

She hated being sheared but allowed it. Maybe she was smart enough to understand the relief that would come with a freshly shorn body, mid-summer. And her body was small! Startlingly petite without all that wool. She also hated fireworks but seemed to gather near to a bonfire.

She knew Klaus apart from all visiting dogs but still gave him a gentle little Stick Leg Treatment when he was being spicy. She knew to hide behind the legs of the tall bachelors, perhaps thinking her round little body was invisible, but most likely not caring, just calculating her next sprint around the back field.

Her name was Marigold because the day she came to live here, in June of 2020, was the first day that our French marigolds bloomed that year. Little Lady because, well because that’s what she was.

Her eyes were domed, always glassy and clear, with perfectly straight, slotted pupils. She had an honest, private gaze. She had hooves like little high heels and intense little legs. Solid black. And she chewed with a slight sideways grind that frequently made me hungry. After a long while and many pep talks, we got her to wear a little yellow halter, just to make capturing that much simpler, and I loved how it looked on her, with her floofy gray and white wool exploding in great clouds all around it. The day she got sick I removed her halter to make her as absolutely as comfortable as possible and it left a slight indentation in her face hairs. She let me massage it and sing Norwegian Wood.

She had triangle ears, soft and black and attentive to every sound. She was fond of sitting out in the sun or out in the moonglow, often staring downhill. She was impervious to snow. Her pasture mate, Romulus, is equally stout and contemplative, so they made a great match. The day she died, he watched over her and observed her removal solemnly. He lost all protectiveness. His guard had fully dropped.

*reigning queen of kicking rambunctious puppies*

Little Lady Marigold was a Suffolk sheep, a stunning fifteen years old this year. She was vivacious and low maintenance in all conditions. She ate well and drank well too, as evidenced by the little rainbow sheen her lanolin fleece left on the surface of her drinking water. We never knew her to be sick or even slow moving, not once, not until this week.

This Monday morning when LLM would normally be bleating and running left and right along the red steel gate for her breakfast happy to tell Romulus she was first today, she was downhill instead, and quiet. She was standing upright but would not come to me. I took a deep breath and said a prayer, heavy with that familiar sensation of this is bad. She let me approach and hold her but would not eat. Her breathing was a little challenged, a little shallow, and she just seemed… sad. She had lost all of her bounce. Gradually she walked around more, and I was too encouraged by that. She sought the sun on her face. She napped. She sipped water. And she hid herself away in her shelter.

The next two days were quiet for our regal little woman, and the gentle January weather was a blessing. It made it easier for me to make sure she was dry and softly bedded down, surrounded by eating and drinking options. I stayed with her most of those two days, only touching her when she said ok. My husband started her on a round of penicillin just in case she had a respiratory illness, but deep down we already felt she was just dying gently. Our friend and mentor, Maribeth, who was Marigold’s first farm mom, reminded me of LLM’s age and how very far past life expectancy she already was when she came to the Lazy W.

Early Wednesday morning, we discovered that Marigold had passed in her sleep. She was never in acute distress as far as we could tell, and she had curled herself up neatly, hopefully feeling safe and cozy and loved. Gosh she was loved. We wrapped her in two floral bedsheets and buried her gently, in that meadow behind the yurt. We gather there frequently to pray and be reflective, so she will be near lots of loving energy forever. I plan to grow a thick patch of French marigolds for her there, and BW has designated a gorgeous old tree stump as her grave marker.

Romulus and the other three bachelors watched from a distance, and Klaus stood with us. He got to say goodbye up close, and as he did so we gave thanks for Marigold teaching him how to gather and collect an animal safely. A shepherd, after all, he did this with her as needed, maybe a handful of times, and it was amazing. He was swift, gentle, and smart about it. She was an excellent teacher, and held a grudge of course, as was her right to do.

We already miss her so much. She was a singular presence here at the farm, a vibrant energy with an irreplaceable voice. If you have ever visited and heard Marigold “bleating” you know what I mean! It was a heavy handed, guttural sound that in no way matched her sweet appearance!

I would never have thought to myself, “You know what I want? An elderly Suffolk sheep!” But now I cannot imagine not having known her. Now, I see that she was gift, a beautiful, low, round, bossy, affectionate, introverted, brilliant little soul, and we will never forget her. I will also never stop giving thanks for her peaceful end, for the void of tragedy in her long, lovely life. She was a Lady, the Queen of Hearts.

If you grow some French marigolds this, year, please think of her.

“I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.”
xoxo

advent 2021, choosing HOPE as a strategy

Earlier today I was about 2,000 words deep in an overly effusive essay about hope. This is the first week of Advent, after all, a few days meant to celebrate the virtue. I was excited to share some stories and ideas with you and just typed feverishly all morning.

Then I received some disturbing news wrapped in painful, stabbing words that sparked some deep anger, and my enthusiasm plummeted. I let myself “feel the feelings,” so to speak, until it felt like I was actually spiraling out of control in those emotions. I am struggling lately, as hard as that is to admit, and it doesn’t take very much for me to lose my balance.

One valuable lesson I have learned in this ongoing emotional rollercoaster is that when I sense my feet are on the banks of quicksand, when I feel that out of control kind of grief about to overtake me, it’s time to reach out to someone else. Not for salvation necessarily, but to be a help if possible. It’s good to reach out to someone beyond the situation at hand, pray for someone totally unrelated to my current crisis, and widen my view until my heart expands past this immediate pain and I regain some perspective. Our grandmother Ina Lynne was know for practicing a version of this, and she was one of the gentlest, strongest, most forward-thinking women I have ever known.

So I called my sister Angela, just to say hi and let her know I was still praying about something she had shared with us. I used my most stupid fake-chipper voice.

Can I pause here and say what a blessing it is to have siblings who are your friends and confidants?

We chatted only briefly before she asked about my girls, and my stupid chipper voice faltered. We have grown close enough now that I can no longer hide much of what’s going on inside me, and actually this is wonderful.

“This is not hopeless,” Ang said. I physically crumbled against the wall and started crying. She did not know I had been writing for the past three hours about hope.

“You have every reason to be hopeful,” she asserted, in a low, denim-velvet voice, both soothing and authoritative. She knows a thing or two about hopelessness, recovery, addiction, alienation, and more.

She also knows about healing and the power of community and HOPE. She works for an agency by that exact name, by the way, and their mission is to usher the least hopeful among us into new lives.

We spoke for a few more minutes about odds and likelihoods and statistics, about patterns and trauma all the many hardships inflicted on our kids over the years. But the real message between us was the power of Love and prayer and the reality that hope flourishes into actual, living-proof results. She got me to refocus on the future instead of wallowing in hate for the people who have hurt my girls. I hate that I need this redirection, but I do sometimes, and I am grateful when I get it.

We get to choose hope. We get to let it warm us and strengthen us while we endure the unknowns. Hope leads us into better choices and better habits and better outlooks. We expect more from ourselves and hold higher standards for each other when we side with hope and remember that despair is a shifting illusion.

Sure, we get to feel the fear, and the pain, and even the rage, and then we get to actively set our feet on solid ground and walk the much better path.

I am so thankful Ang picked up the phone while I was still on the brink of emotional quicksand. Part of the magic, as I am sure you already know, is that in reaching out toward someone else, chances are pretty good that the connection will lift you, too.

For my family, I choose hope. I choose to believe that healing is real and overcoming is what we were born to do. I choose to believe that Love transcends literally every hardship, and the fate others have chosen does not have to be ours.

“Hope is not a strategy.”
“You must not have been here long.”
XOXOXOXO

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

headlines & themes this week

Around the Farm:

The animals are enjoying our mild weather. The horses, llamas, and Little Lady Marigold, our timid and solitary sheep, are all snoozy and calm. They watch the skies change and graze to their hearts’ content. Our two geese still wander free, and I love this very much. They nest anywhere they want to and do little damage. Klaus has not murdered them, not even once. The chickens are rewarding us for the nice weather (as if we are responsible for it) with heavy, thick-yolked eggs, shells in every color from tan to heavy brown and a blue-mint green. Do you remember Zoom, our little quarantine hatchling? She has outgrown Zsa Zsa now, and clearly Zsa Zsa, a fancy Polish girl, was just her surrogate mother. Zoom is growing quickly into a picture perfect Auraucana. For our Pacino devotees, please rest assured that he is still wildly happy living outdoors in the South Coop. One red hen in particular keeps him company on a daily basis, and often six or seven other chickens join the fun inside his private quarters. It’s fine. It’s fine!

While plenty still remains and is thriving, I have been ripping out exhausted remnants of the summer gardens, making space for what comes next. Today the boys and I walked through Scissortail Park then did a little easy shopping around town, and I brought home a good amount of mums, pansies, ornamental cabbage, and a few other fun perennials. I did hold off on buying pumpkins until Jess and I can explore together.

We closed and covered the pool yesterday. September 19th is a respectable date for punctuating a long, happy swim season. We are okay with it. Do we love summertime so much and still crave a trip to a beach somewhere on the Gulf? Yes. Yes of course we do. But how wonderful that we enjoyed the pool and deck for so many happy months of this very weird year. And since the end of melty heat and intoxicating coconut oil and chlorine also means the beginning of cool, crisp walks outside and longer bonfires, then the task at hand is to count our blessings and pleasures. This is almost always the task at hand.

The yurt is fully built now and about ready for a floor inside. We are leaning toward mulch, to amplify the cedar-steam experience. Lots of friends and family have already visited to do a little socially distant painting on the exterior covering, and we are in love with it all. Just look at this cute brother-sister duo!! The Whitley crew added lots of color and love to this project, for which we are so thankful. They are all very special to us.

Seasonal Shift:

Our temperatures and humidity have dropped, and the leaves are changing just so delicately, so gently. We have opened the house windows several times and are planning a few repairs and beautification projects around the house to caplitalize on the comfortable afternoons. Personally, although I did bake pumpkin bread once, I resist diving straight into cold weather anything, because I know that soon enough it will be plenty cold for longer than we like. I have my feet planted pretty firmly in this transition season, determined to enjoy all the in-between beauty that comes with it. Lots of ease, lot of fresh air, in every sense of the expression. A long, fruitful pause between extremes.

Read, Watch, Listen:

There is a lot to be said for good communication, for granular expression, as Bree Brown says. I listened to her podcast episode on emotional literacy and ended it feeling challenged to sit more comfortably with my feelings and then to express them more clearly, more effectively. I ended it deciding to answer my husband better when he asks are you ok. I also decided to start finding more specific ways to discover how my people are doing.

Brad and Steve honestly have the best material. I cannot get enough. Their podcast episode on burnout and the pandemic was so helpful. Give it a listen. I have a whole post in draft, outlining how it impacted me. How are you doing, on the burnout barometer?

I am almost done reading To Shake the Sleeping Self. It is the memoir of a young man who, together with an acquaintance from work, took a nearly spontaneous bicycling trip from Seattle all the way down to the tip of Patagonia. It has inspired me, certainly, for both physical endurance challenges and for deeper self exploration, but also to travel more and to travel better. Going off beaten paths, meeting more people, seeing unseen places and rediscovering new beauty. I just finished a chapter where they stopped in Moerlia, Mexico. This is a town in the mountains with which Jessica’s boyfriend Alex is intimately familiar. I love hearing him describe the culture there. It’s nothing like the tropical, touristy slice of Mexico we experienced on our honeymoon (though wow that is beautiful too).

Have you considered the Netflix series called Ratched? We are big fans of American Horror Story, and this is a similar viewing experience. We binged it this past week, and I think it made Saturday night popcorn taste even better than usual. Dark! Dark and adult. Not for kids, in case you were wondering.

Are you following Morgan Harper Nichols yet? Because if you are a living, breathing, feeling, evolving, hurting, or otherwise hungry human being, then you sould. She is easily found and propogated on Instagram, but she has a strong presence pretty much everywhere I look. Bob Goff even interviewed her recently! Gorgeous. Noursishing. Makes me cry and makes my mouth water all the time.

And then this short essay on a beautiful, anxiously aging woman, I ran across it on Facebook:

How many years of beauty do I have left?” she asks me.
How many more do you want? Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old and your beauty rises
in ways your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and ripe
having carried the weight of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame with winter
and you have decades of learning and leaving and loving
sewn into the corners of your eyes
and your children come home to find their own history in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail ferociously
and have gained the capacity to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart.
Queen owl wings beating beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin, remember?
This is when I will take you into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.
~Jeanette Encinias

Find more poetry by Jeanette Encinias here.

People:

Jess and Alex invited us to their house for dinner Friday night. Jess set the table beautifully and spent several hours preparing us a gorgeous, delicious meal. It was part belated birthday fun for Handsome, part just touching base with each other. We took Klaus along, and he and Bean partied hard while the rest of us did not cheat at cards whatsoever, despite the rumors.

During our cards game, Alex got a phone notification about the passing of Justice Ginsburg. It is just so sad, and her life was so truly humbling and inspiring. We had one more good conversation about this with the kids, in a long line of good conversations. They are two of the smartest, most thoughtful people I know. We are so happy to spend time with them, watching them sort out their beautiful lives and express themselves. I think that I will always remember sharing that moment in history with them, at their dining room table.

This collection of short tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg is worth reading. What a legacy. We will all be watching our collective love for her grow over time.

Final Thoughts for the New Week:

The world is changing, we are all feeling it. But the world is as beautiful and magical as it is broken. We are every bit surrounded by miracles ready to happen and dazzling grace as we are burdened by tragedy, difficulty, and grief. We are not robots. We get to creatively choose how we respond to every single detail, even the curveballs. Especially the curveballs! We get to take hold of our own energy and make something breathtaking with the gifts we are given, which are numerous.

Hang in there. Write some Senses Inventories this week. Reach out to your people. Drink more water. Exercise in a new way. Take it all in. Count your blessings and register your pleasures, and if you’re in a dark place, know that things always turn around.

“Fight for the things that you care about,
but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
~Ruth Bader Ginsburg
XOXOXOXO

a restful, healing week

“It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.” -Rebecca West

This past week was the first time in many years, outside of a few occassions of convalescence, that we have enjoyed so much quiet, uninterrupted time with Jessica. (Although my husband might passionately argue that very much of our time was quiet, ha!)

It was luscious in every way. She and Bean went home today, and the farm is so quiet. We already miss them very much.

Image may contain: Jessica Hartley

Of our many exceptionally deep and fascinating conversations, one that has been echoing in my heart was about how humans are designed to crave beauty, how it is a natural appetite and a healthy inclination. We measured it against passion-gifts, too, like art and science, cooking and gardening and nesting, against caring for ourselves as women, and travel and the craving to explore this big world, and much more. We agreed that a hunger for beauty and a drive to pursue our unique passions can lead us down the best paths, if we watch our motivations.

My daily devotional entry from July 20th says, “Seek my face and you will find all that you have longed for. The deepest yearnings of your heart are for intimacy with me. Do not be afraid to be different from other people. The path I have called you to travel is exquisitely right for you.” (Jesus Calling)

This past week I was able to see the farm, and our home, through Jessica’s eyes a bit more deeply. A bare bones routine became soothing, not boring. I watched her slowly unwind and shed a landslide of stress from her body and spirit. She soaked up every day, morning till night, and every meal and activity we laid hold of, with a joyful kind of mindfulness that really inspired me. She allowed beauty and pleasure to overtake her, and more than ever she reflected and magnified all kinds of beauty, just by being herself, natural and free and untethered for a while. It was like watching overstressed plant rehydrate, turn emerald green, and bloom before your eyes.

Her health and happiness, and Jocelyn’s, is everything to us. This well timed investment of time and rest was so wise on Jess’ part, and I know that she was engaged enough in the retreat process to retain the feelings, to translate the efforts to her daily life and normal routine, in ways that only she can do.

I would like to chat more extensively about the pursuit of beauty in life, in the world at large. About how the deepest purpose in our various callings, is maybe to reflect Love? Soon, I hope. I am sleepy now and can feel my thoughts unraveling a bit. Thank you, friends, for the love you send our girls.

XOXOXOXO