Sunday Muse ~ Happy Winter Solstice















































If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost
piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table
or somewhere slowly falling
into the brook
to be swallowed by water,
then you have seen beauty
and know it for its transience.
And if you have gone out in the snow
for only the pleasure
of walking barely protected
from the galaxies,
the flakes settling on your parka
like the dust from just-born stars,
the cold waking you
as if from long sleeping,
then you can understand
how, more often than not,
truth is found in silence,
how the natural world comes to you
if you go out to meet it,
its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,
its vacant birdhouses, and dens
full of the sleeping.
But this is the slowed-down season
held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.


“Winter Grace’ by Patricia Fargnoli

Almost November

Well, the lambs are sheared and the fiber room is full to the brim of lovely fleeces just waiting to be skirted.  We’ve had our October snow and flirt with winter.  Thankfully it melted quickly.  The ewes are in their second paddock of the hayfield.  The rams have been walking the fence line, just waiting for their ladies to be readied for breeding.  It’s almost November, can you believe it?

Weekly Top Shot

Our girl, Bertha, has received a lot of Flickr love this week.  She has been described almost perfectly by one of our Flickr friends ~  “like a rough and tumble child with bits of the wild in her hair”.  This is another shot just moments after her pasture greeting.  She is a beauty and looks even more beautiful in a winter landscape.  We’re hoping she’s growing one or two equally beautiful lambs 🙂

joining Madge at The View From Right Here for Weekly Top Shot