We had a wonderful relaxing day which included an awesome church service with a couple of “oldie but goodie” hymns ( Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing). You don’t hear the classics so much these days, and it’s a shame really. They are so rich- giving you something to really chew on.

Speaking of chewing, I made puff pastry pinwheels.  I have avoided puff pastry for years because it was full of hydrogentated oils and nasty preservatives, but not any more. Prepperidge Farms makes a “healthier” version. Granted it is still white flower, but puff pastry feeds the soul if not the body.  Opening the dough up and laying it flat, I then brushed it with an egg wash. Next I layered on broccoli, mushrooms, onions, parmesan and cheddar cheese, salt, pepper, and a little cayenne.  You could really use any filler you choose.  After that, I rolled it up log style, cut the pinwheels, placed them on a qreased cookie sheet, and brushed with some more egg wash.  

Here’s is my assistant. (He is very careful with knives.  and swords, and pellet guns, and little brothers)

Then we baked them at 400 degress for about 15-20 minutes. They smelled amazing!

Add a nice salad, a mixed berry pie with homemade whipped cream, raspberry iced tea with fresh mint from the garden, and we had a very nice Mother’s Day dinner.  My mom and I had planned to add more herbs to the garden after we watched some relaxing golf on TV.  I can’t say we are huge golf fans, but what we really like are all the flowers on the golf courses, especially the azaleas!  Just as we started wandering around the garden deciding where to put stuff, it started drizzling. So we headed inside for more golf.  Eventually, my 6 year-old master digger and I got the lavender, cialntro, and basil in place, and then we added the purple petunias he brought home from church.  

We missed you, Vicki, my incredibly talented sister.  And Dixie, my wonderful mother-in-love (mother-in-law, but I like “love” better), And Grandmother, who will be 90 this year!  And all my aunts and cousins, other in-loves and friends. Hope you all had wonderful mothers’ days.

Happy Mother’s Day!  

Now, I’m taking a nap…

Ok, not really physically in Williamsburg. Virginia, that is.  But I am mentally there.  Do you ever wake up and the breeze smells a certain way, or the light filters through the trees just so, and suddenly you are somewhere else? That is exactly what happened to me today. I opened the windows around lunchtime, and then Flashback.

The warm summer breeze wafted in, the leaves swayed, and the intensely blue cloudless sky framed everything around.  In an instant, I was driving down a country road, taking the  ”back way”  from Newport News to Williamsburg, passing long stretches of white split rail fences and horses grazing in large fields.  Towering trees along the roadside feel like a soft but  incomplete tunnel, making the roadway look like marble with splotchy areas of sun and shade  The air fluctuates between warm and cool as I pass in and out of shady spots.  And the smell of the air…..  It’s an indescribable mix of grass, horses, hydrangeas, dampness and pine . It gets me every time….I breathe deep and smile.

ZAPBACK. My son comes in the room to tell me that Tornado Watches are out for our area. Back to reality. Back to the Midwest, which is beautiful in its own way. Time to make sure our emergency preparedness plans are in place.  But as soon as that’s done, I’m heading back to that country road near Williamsburg.  After all, mental vacations are free, and you can take them as often as you like. Well, unless people began to think you might have a “problem”.  

But…..but…..the air, the smell of the warm breeze…..I cannot resist……

When I was a senior in highschool, I fell in love with an older man.  Actually, three older men. Robert Frost, Robert Herrick, and John Donne. What I really fell in love with was poetry.  (I just used that opening line to get your attention.) My gracious and patient english teacher painstakingly taught the class to interpret a poem verse by verse.  It was on Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” that the light bulb burst on for me, and I have never been the same.

Later on, in college, when I became a Christian, Donne’s poems  grew into something much more meaningful to me.  He expresses like none other the struggle within ourselves to do good and yet fail so often. But he always finds his way back to the grace and mercy found on the cross.

Not all his writings are religious. Many deal with romantic love, some to the point of making one blush!  But that only makes me appreciate Donne all the more. He was real and wasn’t afraid to write about what was really going on inside him. He didn’t separate the sacred and the secular. He understood that God  created it all, and that life is not meant to be compartmentalized.  I find his poems comforting because I see aspects of my own struggles and pleasures reflected in his writings. And that, I believe,  is what has made him transcend his own time in history.

Here are a few of my favorite:

HOLY SONNETS.

XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 165.

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
by John Donne

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
    Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
    And do run still, though still I do deplore?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
    Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
    A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
    My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
    Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
        And having done that, Thou hast done ;
                    I fear no more.

Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I. 
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 213.