Life Flows...

The snow has fled and the crocus are back in the business of blooming. Now I listen to the rain fall.

Blades of daffodil leaves are bent and somewhat yellowed from trying to poke up through a heavy layer of snow.

And it's lambing season.

The other day I went to a neighbor's home to return something that had been left behind and she invited me out to see the new lambs. The one in the picture above had dropped just minutes before we arrived in the paddock. Mama sheep had not yet finished cleaning it. Birth is messy and bloody and oh, so wonderful. My neighbor expressed her admiration for the sheep, how they give birth without much fuss. Smarter than we think they are.

"Of course they act like prey animals," she said. Maintaining coherent groups, following the crowd, that's the smart way for prey animals to survive. We humans just don't understand their intelligence.

Older lambs were out playing in the small valley still much laden with snow, under the watchful eyes of their mothers. The grass is still brown, and many bare patches of mud show. All those with grass-eating livestock are concerned about the grass. The snow and rain will help, but only the grass that survived the last two hot, dry summers,

So they go warily into this spring.

But it is spring. And life keeps flowing...