Lazy W Marie

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

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friday 5 at the farm, 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. As the garden continues to flourish and the outdoor spaces transform, keeping everything tidy becomes an important task. Garden cleanup involves more than just removing dead leaves and debris; it also includes ensuring that every corner is prepared for the new growth. Just as I delight in nurturing my garden, I also appreciate the efficiency of professional cleaning services. For instance, GDI services offers specialized industrial cleaning solutions that can tackle the toughest challenges, ensuring that spaces remain pristine and functional. Their expertise ensures that both indoor and outdoor environments stay fresh and welcoming, allowing me to focus on enjoying the beauty and bounty of springtime.

(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

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

give chase

As of today, Handsome and his team at Public Utilities are working in the building again. Full time, more or less, with plenty of considerations and creative solutions to keep everyone safe and happy. Although he has been in the Jim Thorpe building or at the Capitol more and more in recent weeks, this marks a new chapter. The farm will miss him very much.

This afternoon while going on a muddy wander-walk around the farm, Klaus and I discovered three giant buzzards feeding on the carcass of a dead snake (an enormous, previously muscular, now flat and stinking dead snake). The exact moment we realized they were buzzards and not crows, Klaus flexed his entire body, spiked up his terrifying hackles, and bolted straight and hard like something out of an action movie. The scavenger birds dispersed, floated up to the lowest branch of a nearby pine tree, and sat there pulsing their considerable shoulders at us. Klaus delivered his most baritone warning to the sky then turned to me proudly, smiling.

We wander-walked away, but every time Klaus sensed the buzzards return silently to the ground, he again gave chase, ruined their luncheon, and returned to me, panting and smiling. Few things makes this boy happier than protecting the farm. Even if he is protecting us from nature itself.

All of that adrenaline boiled, cooled, and boiled again, without a full release. So when Johnny Ringo (the cat) joined us on the meditation path, he was really in for it.

In about an hour, I get to meet with a fascinating gentleman from Choctaw to finish up his pandemic interview, which I will be sharing later this week. I am so excited to get back in the swing of this project. And I believe you will be inspired by his slant of things this past year. His is one of two stories that still remain to be told (my friends are so patient), then I will be hungry for more interviews. I had to take some time away to kind of let my heart settle. It had all built up in unexpected ways for me, then of course the gardens and all of life reopening meant I was spending less and less time on my laptop. Anyway. I’m back and loving the project and everyone’s stories as much as ever.

This first day of June has been a good one for diving into good intentions, sweaty exercise, happy farm tasks, and solid conversation. My heart is full. I hope whatever you’re chasing gives you the same thrill as wild buzzards gave Klaus today.

“Whatever fills the heart and consumes the mind
is a manifestation of what is worshipped.”
-Alisha Illian
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