It was a bittersweet day here yesterday, Leah quietly and sometimes sadly thinking about her younger sister Patti, a wife and mother and tender soul who died a year ago this week.It was also the day our friend Marcia came, clippers in hand, to shear our three Shetland sheep. The barn had to be cleaned up, the sheep wrangled. It was probably good that we were so busy, our minds on the task at hand.
The sheep, dogs, and other animals in our rag-tag menagerie require a lot of our time and attention, but are certainly the best show in town. After Marcia finished the shearing, the sheep stood in the pasture, looking small and vulnerable but yelling their heads off. We laid the fleeces out on our picnic table. The dogs came around to sniff-sniff-sniff and puzzle over a scent that normally is carried in the breeze out of the pasture. Now that scent is here, at the house. How could that be? Sniff-sniff-sniff.
I spent some very pleasant minutes in the pasture, petting our sheep-friend Sweet Pea on his face. He would have happily enjoyed hours of that kind of attention, had I not had strawberries that begged to be weeded.
Our black sheep, Smokey, produced a fleece that Leah said is a treasure, and she is excited about washing, spinning, and knitting it into something worthy.
When Patti was ill she knitted a scarf for Leah. That, too, is a treasure.
