Wildflower Writes

Photo by  Dennis Klein  on  Unsplash I had just come out of a meeting with my supervisor. My next few weeks of work were pretty much lined up for me, and I was feeling stressed. Over the course of the workday, three different co-workers popped in my office to offer me sweet snacks, including Rise ‘n’ Roll’s infamous cinnamon caramel donuts. This never happens. Some days I hole up in my office and will only see someone on the way to filling up my coffee cup. I’m not sure if everyone was feeling the first of the week/ first of the month optimism, but I love that I work with people who are always thinking about how they can improve someone else’s day. I’m not a big Valentine’s Day fan, but kindness and love are always in style. 

The rich sweetness of chocolate is my answer to everything.  It’s for celebration, for consolation, for pain relief (physical or emotional), for PMS, for dessert, for appetizer, for snack, for love, for encouragement, for excitement, for relaxation, for pleasure, and for fun. One of my favorite books as a child was “Chocolate Fever” by Robert Kimmel Smith.  It is a classic.  In the book, Henry loves chocolate so much he eats it on everything and at every meal.  When he breaks out into brown, chocolate smelling spots, his doctor calls it “Chocolate Fever.”  The medical community is so fascinated with his case he has to run away to avoid their constant attention. I like Henry’s style, although I have yet to eat chocolate on mashed potatoes or noodles.   I like it best plain- a Hershey’s Dark or other fancy bar.  I also like it wrapped around nuts or caramel or more chocolate and nestled in a heart-shaped box.  However, the chocolates with t...

Life is like a poker game. Sometimes the chips are up; sometimes the chips are down. You can’t control what you’re dealt, but you can decide what to do with them. Sometimes you can bluff your way through. The better you read other people the better you can play. You really can’t get anywhere unless you’re willing to risk something. You get your biggest success when you put it all in. Life is like a baseball game. Different people have different strengths and succeed best when their role matches their strengths. Every person plays an important part, although you never know when you’ll be called into action. You do better when you think ahead before you need to act. The more you practice, the better you get, but a coach always helps. Your decisions affect other people. As good as you are, you can’t succeed without the help of others. Life is like a nursing home. Some people are genuinely needy, but try to do what they can for themselves. Some people expect other people to do everything f...

I love Spring. I feel like I can finally say that, now that there’s no snow in the immediate forecast and tomorrow’s prediction is calling for temperatures in the 80s. I had ice cream yesterday for the first time in several weeks. Ice cream is the ultimate warm weather food. I thoroughly enjoyed a cold, creamy, rich combination of flavors that melted on my tongue and refreshed me from the inside out. As I was driving home from a meeting last night, I thanked God for the smell of freshly mown grass. I know God didn’t create the mower, but that sweet, earthly smell that follows in its path is straight from heaven. The fountain outside my office is working now. The sound of running, bubbling water flowing over stone and growing green things plays a unique little melody. It has a calming effect, even at the start of the day. Mr. Robin said hello to me this afternoon as I pulled into the parking lot after lunch. He didn’t actually talk. He looked at me, as if proud of his status as the harb...

Ever wonder where cotton candy came from? Whenever you go to the fair, amusement park, or circus, you’re likely to see food vendors with blue and pink fluffy cotton candy, some in packages as large as a young child. The texture is soft, but sticks to the moisture of your fingers or tongue. In your mouth, it melts down to almost nothing, leaving a pure sweetness behind. Cotton candy has been around for a long time, although not in its current form. The Iranians created a confection called “Pashmak” from sugar and sesame oil, which was probably the predecessor to our modern day cotton candy. Pashmak means “like wool.” Recipes for spun sugar are found in European cookbooks back to the mid-eighteenth century. Confectioners would go to great lengths to carefully melt sugar and fling the floss like strands into carefully crafted shapes. They would create spun sugar nests for Easter and sugar webs to decorate desserts. In 1897 William Morrison and John Wharton patented a candy machine that pr...

I was going through my twitterfeed, and two quotes struck me. British prime minister Gordon Brown said in his address to US Congress: "We conquer our fear of the future through our faith in the future." (Reported by NPR's Andrea Seabrook). Author Leonard Sweet said (twittered), " True faith is not our firm hold on certain truths, but trust in God's loving, sure hold on us." Faith. What is it? Is it looking with blinders on, neither to the right or left, but clinging to what we've always known? Is it boundless hope, caught up in the idea that if we wish hard enough, what we want will come to pass? As wonderful as Mr. Brown's speech was: " So we must educate our way out of the downturn, invest and invent our way out of the downturn, and re-tool and re-skill our way out of the downturn;" I don't have faith in the future in itself. I pray that God has mercy on our nation and the nations of the world and allows for a less stressful ...