Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
the thorn queenshe waxes full in fertile gracequeen of quick and fay, she reignsin mantle green and seemly facequelling fear and mortal painseternal mother, ever maidundying wisdom in her glancedeathless weird is on her laidto spin th' unceasing wheel of chanceagain, she comes in crown of thornto lave the earth in blessed dewsthrough her travail… Continue reading The Daily: 1 May 2026
Walpurgis Night The last day of April has been a fraught time for millennia. This is a night when pranks are pulled, when spells are cast and wishes are granted, when the Good Folk pass through the veils to walk the woodlands, and when witches dance. The Beltaine fires were lit at midnight on May… Continue reading The Daily: 30 April 2026
Floralia Cosiddetta Flora from the Villa di Arianna in Stabiae near Pompeii, 1st century Roman fresco The festival of Floralia is a very old holiday. It honors Flora, the Roman idea of fertility that is embodied in spring flowers. Flora is one of the oldest deities in the Roman pantheon. She is older than Rome,… Continue reading The Daily: 26 April 2026
Don't plant on this day or your horse will die... so says the Old Farmer's Almanac... I don't have a horse, so maybe it's safe to plant my carrots today. A Red-Letter Day April 25th is a complicated date. It is St Mark’s Day, which is honored with a wide variety of celebrations; and it… Continue reading The Daily: 25 April 2026
The Sap Moon went dark yesterday at 7:52am. Today begins the Greening Moon. I have not written much about this lunation. Usually I am very busy in April because of Poetry Month with its various poetry readings and, to a lesser extent, because the garden is becoming demanding during this moon of leafing out. I'm… Continue reading The Daily: 18 April 2026
If you leave a man on land which is someone else's property and tell him he is a completely free man and can work for himself, it's as if you drop him in the middle of the Atlantic and tell him he is free to go ashore. — Henry George in Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom… Continue reading The Daily: 12 April 2026
Today is National Dandelion Day. It's also Easter. I don't celebrate Easter in the Christian sense. I think there is quite enough suffering in the world without invoking the sacrifice of grain gods into the beginning of spring. However, I am starting to think that the secular holiday, the bits with rabbits and eggs and… Continue reading The Daily: 5 April 2026
The Daily for 29 March 2024: Hot cross buns!
Lady Day March 25th is Lady Day. This is another Marian holiday which incorporated older pagan traditions — in this case, the New Year celebrations which fell on 25 March before Julius Caesar shifted the Roman observance to the beginning of January. Lady Day is nine months before December 25th, so you can probably figure… Continue reading The Daily: 25 March 2026
Tomorrow is Lady Day. Inasmuch as I celebrate the start of a new gardening year, tomorrow is it. March 25th was also the de facto New Year's Day for most of Roman history and remained a new year celebration up until the Enlightenment in many cultures derived from Rome. So tonight is New Year's Eve.… Continue reading The Daily: 24 March 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 