Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
I had the singularly dis/en-couraging experience of getting well into writing an essay in the wee hours of the morning and then, at lunch, opening up the 4th chapter of Elvia Wilk's Death by Landscape: Essays and reading nearly what I had written. Different anecdotes, different style, exact same message. Even many of the same… Continue reading Quandary
i did not mean to say goodbye only… perhaps my boots did having some mystic yearning for autumnal perambulation and perturbation for resolution beyond words it is hard going being abandoned by quality footwear and i always was one for ruthless equinoctial cleaning putting the house in order sending spiders scurrying as the sun slides… Continue reading quenched
It is the Feast of the Assumption. In the Church calendar, this is the day Mother Mary was taken bodily up to heaven without the inconvenience of dying first. But in the older calendar of Europe, this was the time when it was recognized that the heat of summer was breaking. The Dog Days end… Continue reading The Feast of the Assumption
There has been considerable argument over where the majority of humans will live in the near future. This may seem like a pointless exercise since where people end up is where people end up, and what we think of the matter matters not at all. And maybe that is true, but it is also true… Continue reading The Future Is…
A Full Moon Tale for the Blueberry Moon I wrote this while contemplating the ebullient growth of green stuff in my garden. As a human, I tend to see this as "trying to take over the world". When really, it's more about "trying to be the world". The weeds and zucchini are just doing exactly… Continue reading A Word from Us
So here’s an embarrassment… I may have missed blueberry season. Either that or it just didn’t happen much this year in New England. My bushes are still far too young to produce, though there were a few small berries on each plant. At about the same time my bushes were making berries, there were local… Continue reading Foraging
It's the probably not-terribly-ancient festival of bread, Lammas, Hlaf-mas, Loaf Mass. This holiday is possibly an English variant on the Irish first fruits and fair festival of Lughnasadh, but compacted into one day and generally lacking any ritual or narrative. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, churches in East Anglia constructed elaborate displays… Continue reading Lammas Muffins & Myths
An informal letter of resignation which nobody will ever read. And a general polemical complaint which nobody will ever care about. I’m not a miracle worker. And they want a miracle. No. It’s worse than that. They need, we need, a miracle. We need a spontaneous and very specific genetic mutation. Now. Yesterday. Twenty years… Continue reading Corn Futures
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 leaf… Continue reading Lughnasadh
Now the rudbeckia are opening. The topmost leaves on the maple trees have a faint wash of orange overlaid on green. And the roadside stands of goldenrod are beginning to turn into fields of sunshine. It is just shy of the season of Lughnasadh. We’ve nearly made it through July, and now the blessedly cool… Continue reading Roasting!
By My Solitary Hearth 