Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
If Candlemas be bright and clear there'll be two winters in the year. — traditional adage from Scotland Of Candles and Divinatory Beasts There are many weather marking days throughout the year. Candlemas, falling on 2 February, was the day that our ancestors began to get nervous about the spring. A fine Candlemas portends a… Continue reading The Daily: 2 February 2024
If Brigid visited your house with a blessing last night, show her your gratitude by beginning your spring cleaning in her honor. If you have a woodstove, today is a good day to clean out the ashes and begin spreading them on your garden beds. (If you live where the soils are already saline, especially… Continue reading The Daily: 1 February 2024
Today is St Brigid's Eve. In traditional cultures, this is when most of the ritual for Imbolg takes place. St Brigid is welcomed into the home with rush crosses and formal family ceremony and doors thrown wide. A bed is prepared by the hearth, and oats and cream are left on the doorstep. The fires… Continue reading The Daily: 31 January 2024
Things to look forward to... hugs I made it another year in this body. Those years are running by increasingly fast these days — though a day can last forever. But each anniversary of my nativity feels like a triumph of sorts. I am still alive. I am still cognizant and in mostly functional health.… Continue reading The Daily: 30 January 2024
Making Yogurt: In anticipation of Imbolg, we’re going to make yogurt, a fermented dairy product that extends the shelf life of fresh milk — and adds quite a bit of nutrition and delicious flavor.
My sons tell me to ignore the comments when these essays get posted on other websites. Never, never read the comments. Never engage with the comments. Do not even look at the comments. I read the comments... In my defense, I was looking for an image credit. The picture adorning the top of the essay… Continue reading The Daily: 26 January 2024
In one of the more curious instances of holidays reclaimed from obscurity, Wales has resurrected St Dwynwen's Day on January 25th. St Dwynwen was a fifth century princess, the loveliest of King Brychan Brycheiniog’s twenty-four daughters, and the Welsh patron saint of lovers. Her day in the Welsh calendar has steadily grown in popularity since… Continue reading The Daily: 25 January 2024
I like days that have symmetry. Doesn't mean a thing, but it makes my goofy brain happy... Things to look forward to... baking something for someone My birthday is this week. It's supposed to be rainy and just above freezing. Maybe just below freezing. Either way, there are winter weather warnings for the next three… Continue reading The Daily: 24 January 24
We live in a culture of self-harm, a culture that is antithetical to life, that is anti-life. Those of us who live in daily contact with human-built environments are immersed in toxins, in unnumbered mechanical hazards, and in an ocean of damaging electromagnetic radiation. We subject our fragile bodies to impacts and collisions ranging from… Continue reading The Daily: 23 January 2024
These last few days we have been reminded that we live at high latitude and altitude here in Central Vermont. Temperatures have been hovering near 0°F. Saturday, it snowed all day, but it was so cold that it was falling as frozen mist, the individual flakes nearly invisible. But after eighteen hours of mist, there… Continue reading The Daily: 22 January 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 