Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
The front bank. I have an awkward garden, an awkward property actually. I have a house on the east side of the road. In front of the house is a bank at about a 75° downward slope. That is, it’s more like a cliff than a slope. At its highest, it is about eight feet… Continue reading A Xeriscape in Vermont
I live in a rural place, a rural place that is known for its cows. There are cheeses that are named specifically for Vermont (though in rather clueless and ambivalent American fashion, there is often a European geographic appellation attached to “Vermont”, as in “Vermont cheddar”). There are dairies up and down all the hills… Continue reading On a Deficiency of Ice Cream Makers
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
The eighth moon is the Strawberry Moon and, yes, strawberries are bountiful this month — the first real fruit harvest. (I don’t count that rhubarb stuff… it’s chard, not fruit.) While planting and harvesting both happen all year long, this is the month when there is a shift from predominantly planting activities to mainly harvest… Continue reading Midsummer Strawberry Moon
Penstemon in the herb bed. It is Midsummer and as promised here is another list of essential plants for the ecological garden, my Language of Flowers. This list has more lore and fewer entries as I decided to break the growing season into three sections rather than two. Too many plants bloom after May to… Continue reading The Midsummer Garden
It’s the Strawberry Moon. Strawberries ripen around the summer solstice. So with just a modestly sized strawberry patch, you can pick a pint or two a day this time of year. Strawberries are so easy to grow, so productive, so magical. And there is nothing for sale in the supermarket that comes close to a… Continue reading Strawberry Shortcake
Moving house is hard on a body. It’s hard on the planet’s body as well as mine, maybe more so. I have never seen statistics on this sort of thing, other than a passing reference claiming divorced couples create over twice the waste they generated when married — which I sincerely believe is true. I… Continue reading Putting Down Roots
I planted apple trees today. They arrived a couple weeks before we were to move. I had ordered them last summer and forgotten about them entirely. However, I had no intention of putting them in the ground that would soon be yet another past garden. Not least because I didn’t have time to do that.… Continue reading How To Start Over
As you are reading this, I’m moving into the first home I’ve bought. Consequentially, I’m thinking quite a bit about what home means. What it means to me, what it means in the abstract, what it means for our collective culture. Picket fence and all! Many of the common ideas about home in Euro-western culture… Continue reading Becoming Home
As it is the last day of April and the day before Beltaine, I thought it good to give a reference list of flowers to fill your garden with love. I have an ever-growing list of essential flowers and herbs — annuals, perennials and a very few small shrubs. These are the plants that feed… Continue reading My Language of Flowers
By My Solitary Hearth 