Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
It was bean week. Tying up the climbers. Corralling the bush beans. Pulling the stupid Japanese beetles off of the drying beans. Harvesting the pod beans then processing that pile. I also decided to go back to making my own hummus. I don’t know why I ever stopped. I vaguely remember it being difficult to… Continue reading Bean Week
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
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
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!
The morning glories are blooming. And the agastaches. And the monkshood! While the rest of the country is burning, deliquescing into lakes of molten misery, we in northern New England seem to be gifted with an early autumn. The mornings are cool, sometimes cold. Fog drapes the green mountains, drifting down to the river bed… Continue reading Autumn in July
It’s getting busy in the garden. There are tasks each day. Weeds to pull, fruit to harvest, and the occasional flowers to cut for the vase. This last I’m not doing very much, though, mostly because I’m not home enough to enjoy them. But also because I don’t have as many cutting flowers as I… Continue reading Of Weeds and Berries
Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor, Maine. (Wikipedia) It’s that special day in June again. No, not that solstice thing. No, forget graduation. No, not the wedding thing. It’s Paul Bunyan Day! A day to celebrate an absolute idiot who blundered through the north woods, wearing plaid flannel, leading a cow named Babe, and wielding an… Continue reading Paul Bunyan Day
... to Harvest! Vermont finally got some of the summer heat that the rest of the country has been enduring for weeks. Well, sort of. We managed a 40°F jump up to the lower 90s, but without the humidity. It’s not supposed to last, and we’ll likely be back to highs in the 60s by… Continue reading The Wheel Turns
The sun reaches its northernmost point on the horizon today. Tomorrow evening it turns around and starts heading south again. In the US, we call this the beginning of summer, but traditionally this is the middle, Midsummer. The official date of the Midsummer holiday is the 24th, much like the winter solstice holidays are tied… Continue reading Jungle to Veg Garden!
By My Solitary Hearth 