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
I am staunchly ignoring the world right now. No, that's not true... I'm not writing about the world right now; I'm silently watching. Instead, I am enjoying my life. This is Beltaine, the beginning of summer. Time to celebrate the fecundity of the Earth. Birds and bees are singing and dancing their fertility rites. Daffodils… Continue reading The Daily: 29 April 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
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
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
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
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
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 