The ground warms, the snow turns to mud and the air is soft and wet. The sheep and donkeys eat their hay then wander into the back pasture. They scratch in the bit of snow left on the ground for last summers grass and forage though the low bushes eating the thin branches and chewing bark from the trees.
The sheep come back wearing souvenirs, thorny branches, broken sticks and vines tangled in their wool. If they won’t let me pull them out, they all work themselves out soon enough.
Where they walk most there is mud, ice, pooling water. Their thin path to the back pasture is the brown of Asher’s wool spotted with round droppings.
They only leave it when the pass through the gate where it becomes many paths.
