Our dear Dutch friends always find wonderful things to do when we go and stay with them; recently on our visit there, on our last day , they took us for a delightful walk in what I guess is a nature reserve, woods, marshland, lakes, everything I love… it was like being on the eastern end of my imaginary Camel Wood.
Suddenly we came across a view which was just asking to be painted, and as I hadn’t got any artist’s equipment with me or any ability as an artist, I took a photo, which I’ve used as my featured image.
There was a flock of sheep on the edge of some light woodland
Sheep may safely graze on pasture
When the shepherd guards them well.
Where rulers govern well
we may feel peace and rest
and what makes countries happy
Schafe können sicher weiden,
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht.
Wo Regenten wohl regieren,
Kann man Ruh und Friede spüren
Und was Länder glücklich macht.
There in the wood was the shepherd with his three dogs, two active and one retired and on a lead. He was like something out of a story by Tolkien, a most interesting man, who told us that the flock was used to mange the area, to graze it systematically, far better than mowing machines!
I was reminded of ‘Schafe können sicher weiden’, by Bach
Lois Elsden 