Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Lughnasadh It is nearly Lughnasadh. This is my favorite time of year. Some may love midwinter twinkle; others may love the summer sun. But I live for the autumn blaze. The cooling weather, the increasing darkness, the slowing pace and renewed time for reading and introspection. The color and pageantry of fall. The scents of… Continue reading The Daily: 31 July 2023
In many northern communities, July is a hungry month. The spring flush of greens and quick-growing roots like radishes and beets may still be trickling out of the garden, but most have bolted and run to seed. However, even those that remain are long on fiber and short on calories, and little of the spring… Continue reading The Daily: 30 July 2023
Jesus at the Home of Martha and Maryby Harold Copping (1927) July 29th is the feast day of St Martha. Martha was the sister of Mary of Bethany and Lazarus. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the house of the two sisters. Mary sits and listens to the teachings of Jesus, but Martha 'was… Continue reading The Daily: 29 July 2023
The Romans had concerns about drought at this time of year. Three very old festivals were grouped together at the end of July to honor deities who presided over watery things. The first was the Lucaria, the clearing of the groves. This was an ancient observance even in Varro's time (116-27 BCE), and little is… Continue reading The Daily: 25 July 2023
I took large chunks of the weekend — in which I could not do much vigorous work outside for all the Canadian smoke and could not write much for all the bugs in this machine — to clean up my house. (I think it's actually not this machine but something iCloud-derived because it's affecting my… Continue reading The Daily: 24 July 2023
My computer had a wee bug... Because, this week, why not... It seems to be improving, but I might be short on posting for a few days. Eliza
This is a short, but irate, outburst. Apologies for the language... For a very long time I have been irritated at the word sacrifice used to describe what we have to stop doing in order to survive. It is an utterly appalling misuse of language and ideas. What is a sacrifice? What does that mean?… Continue reading The Daily: 20 July 2023
Tuesday morning there was brown fog. Is is still smog when the smoke is from wildfires that are burning hundreds of miles away? Do we need a new term for foreign smoke and local fog blanketing a largely rural region? I looked out over the valley and couldn't see more than a couple blocks. It… Continue reading The Daily: 19 July 2023
Yesterday, the Strawberry Moon went dark at 2:32 in the afternoon. So today begins the Hay Moon. I'm not sure how much hay-making we'll be doing in New England. Apart from the storms of the past week, it's been wet since early June, and before that it was very dry and very cold. In the… Continue reading The Daily: 18 July 2023
Well, it was a disastrous week in the garden. No, not the weather. The rain harried the daisies and left the potatoes prostrate, but that happens every year to no effect except dishevelment. The rain hasn't even bothered the herb bed too much, though none of those plants like humidity and wet feet. No, the… Continue reading The Daily: 17 July 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 