These first few days of October are holding hard to the last warmth of late summer. We wake each morning to mist on the flood meadows beside the river. The grass is wet with dew when I walk through the vegetable garden to my workshop, and spiders' webs, as fine as spun silk, shine in the low sun. Tiny beads of dew catch the light and sparkle like a king's treasure which has been scattered across the ground in the early dawn. It soaks the hem of my habit but my boots, well rubbed with tallow, stay dry.
Sometimes, we find a few moments in the day to sit in the cloister and play the game of Nine Men's Morris. Many years ago, someone scratched a game board into a stone seat in the north alley. We use small river smoothed pebbles, collected near Sheep Brook ford, as gaming pieces. Some are black, some are milk white, and they are kept in a wooden box which old Brother Adam carved long ago.
