Sunday, April 23

Watching the lambs is my favorite. Alone in the barn with the sparrows perching on windowsills and the ewes munching hay; watching the lambs jump and folic and run up and down the wood chip pile and nudge each other and pretend to eat hay like big sheep and flop down along the wall to sleep.

We saw the birth of eight lambs the week we arrived. Triplets first, a real rarity. Then two sets of twins and finally a single so huge it made the mother bleat with pain. All eight were up and walking and sniffing out the mother's milk within fifteen minutes. Slippery and a bit shaky and little tiny baby bleats.

Today is the second day of rain in two weeks - a perfect, gentle, steady rain that soaks deep into the newly-seeded carrots, onions, leeks, beets, spinach, and peas while making the yellow forsythia and spring green willow trees that much brighter.