This weekend, Mr. Wonderful took me to Wimberly, Texas to soak up the Hill Country vibe and get some work done on his piece of Eden (stop it, you gutterminds. I'm talking about his property there!) His land is near the Blanco River and this time of year it's as close to heaven as you can get and still be in Texas.

He finished building a deck overlooking the pond and dry creekbed. Back in February, there was a little waterfall flowing into the pond and water spilling down into the creek. Now, the pond is fairly low--it never dries up completely, but there's no flow, so the water looks like weak coffee. The mustache of ferns sprouting out of the rocks circling the pond seem to remember there was once water flowing through here and they wait, expecting more to come.

I like watching Mr. Wonderful in full-out handydude mode. He moves gracefully and deliberately, very little wasted effort. There's a zen contentment about him, and he must have been thinking through every single thing he was going to do, in what order, for a couple of weeks before this trip, because he works with quiet precision now. I'm appreciating the chance to watch his wiry, ripped body stripped to the waist and misted with sweat, too.

I lounged on the finished portion of the deck and read Michael Palin's Sahara while he built the rest of the deck. To escape the noise of the saw, I went up the hill and put birdseed in feeders. I practiced the fine art of peeing in the woods. Thank you, Bikram Yoga, for all those awful "awkward poses." I had no idea how much those yoga postures help you pee in the woods and not on your shoes!

We went to town for dinner, and found the Cypress Creek Cafe uncharacteristically sedate for a Saturday night. A last-minute cancellation of their musical act might have explained it, except, it's the only nightlife in Wimberly. Maybe the regulars were hoopin' and hollerin' elsewhere, celebrating UT's humiliation of OU earlier in the day.

Back out on the property, we sat in lawnchairs and stargazed. Saw two shooting stars. Sure, they might've been satellites or something less magical, but they looked like shooting stars to us. We made a campfire and roasted marshmallows to golden brown, gooey perfection.

In the miniature cabin that Mr. Wonderful built to serve as toolshed and sleeping quarters, I showed off my flannel pajamas with tiny glow-in-the-dark stars on them. It gets so dark out there, you can't see your hand in front of your face. The only thing either of us could see was the stars on my pajama shirt.

Sunday, he was up at dawn. He rolled me like a burrito up in the two sleeping bags and then went off to put the final boards on the deck he'd framed Saturday. It got down into the 40s, a welcome relief from the 100-degree temperatures we'd seen here just a couple of weeks ago. Your reward for getting up so early is seeing mother and young deer, wild turkeys, and lots of different kinds of birds. At any time of day, there are always about a half-dozen vultures floating in slow circles up in the sky. If you forget how ugly the things are up close, they look beautiful up there.

The deck newly finished, and the smell of freshly sawed lumber and moist newly dug earth in the air, we spread our yoga mats on the deck, stretched ourselves out on the mats and popped the i-pod into the speakers to play a Deepak Chopra meditation. I'm thinking: this is the ultimate expression of getting back to nature for a couple of stressed-out, 40-something urban professionals like us.

With Deepak reminding us to breathe in and out and pointing out that I am not in the universe, the universe is in me, we melted into our yoga mats and luxuriated in the wind in the trees, mild sunlight on our skin and birdsong all around us. As we gently opened our eyes, we both saw a bird high up in the sky, wheeling slowly around in a flapless arch.

It wasn't the meditation that left me with a rug burn on my spine and bruises on Mr. Wonderful's knees. But I won't detail that here.

Buttoned back up, and the i-pod switched to the B-52s, we danced around on the deck to "Love Shack," a fitting send-off for our visit.