Growing fast

During this visit to the monastery, I stayed in a tiny guest cottage near the sheep barns. The cottage is two rooms, really, with a small table set near a big window that looks across the sheep pasture. When I sat at the table to write, I could watch the sheep grazing and look across at the way the clouds swirled in the sky.

It was only two months ago that I spent a weekend at the monastery watching the sheep give birth — and playing with the baby sheep. Those baby sheep have grown that short time, some of them nearly the size of the adults. Of course, the adult sheep looked skinnier than usual — naked almost — because they were shorn the end of May. The baby sheep still were still acting like baby sheep, some still nursing. The bleating, too, is loud this time of year. One sheep would start, and the rest would chime in. Even from inside the guest house, I could hear the shrill sounds of the babies and the lower toned bleating of the mothers.