Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
May the 4th be with you! Hawthorn Day May 4th is Hawthorn Day. This is the traditional day to tie clooties on hawthorn boughs over magical springs. It's one of the days when villages compete to make the most astonishingly elaborate display of greenery and white flowers. It's the Feast of Bona Dea when we… Continue reading The Daily: 4 May 2026
Central Vermont has been experiencing spring weather whiplash. This is what my garden looked like last Sunday (the 21st). We got over three-quarters of an inch of precipitation, nearly all snow, though it melted within the day. The Thursday before this Sunday snowstorm, it was 74°F and very humid. Thursday night into Friday morning, a… Continue reading The Daily: 27 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
Winter has somewhat relented. The snow is gone. We've had showers of just plain rain, not snow or sleet, and several days with the sun shining. At least for a few hours. But it is not warm. Sunday morning the weather forecast was for 60s (°F) and rain; we woke to 27°F and weak sunlight… Continue reading The Daily: 13 April 2026
There seems to be some struggle to enumerate the ways in which closing the Strait of Hormuz affects an average person anywhere in the world, but particularly within the historically comfortably insulated United States. This stems from our broad and long-standing ignorance of how stuff gets to us. This is such a deep problem that… Continue reading The Daily: 6 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!
Saturday was such a buoyant day with the No Kings rallies exploding beyond all our wildest expectations that I was still floating on Palm Sunday. And then the sun came out! So I decided to welcome in Spring. The house is clean. There are rabbits and colorful eggs here and there. And a small vase… Continue reading The Daily: 30 March 2026
Today is Palm Sunday and this coming weekend is Easter. There are palm parades and processions all over, and today is a traditional day for Pace Egg plays, a sort of mumming that features St George and the Dragon. Bake a Pax cake (which are shortbreads with springy decorations in jam or frosting) or figgy… Continue reading The Daily: 29 March 2026
There has still been no planting of peas. It was too cold and windy on St Patrick's Day. The beds were still rock, and I had enough on my plate trying to keep the porch furniture from blowing around as the wind kept shifting and blowing over 30mph. I was not going to plant in… Continue reading The Daily: 23 March 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 