Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
I made a bittersweet discovery last week. I had been noticing little piles of chewed up green stuff on the walkways and on my porches. It looked like unripe fruit, so I thought the rodents had gotten into some deep patch of the jungle that had a stunted peach or plum or something. I am… Continue reading The Daily: 16 September 2024
Things to look forward to... growing your own food While I don't believe anyone can grow all their own food, most everyone can grow some of what they eat. And this is always a delight! A radish, pulled from the cold ground in the springtime. A cucumber slid from the vine. A pile of potatoes… Continue reading The Daily: 4 September 2024
The Blueberry Moon went dark at 9:56pm last night. Today, the sickle Harvest Moon follows the sun into the western horizon. The Harvest Moon is full on 17 September at 10:34pm. Moonrise so close to the full will be a lovely sight, but at its fullest it will be dimmed. This year in North America… Continue reading The Daily: 3 September 2024
Things to look forward to... feeding the birds This time of year, when the day starts dark with fog and ends in warm sunshine, the birds are starting to think about migration. In days when we still had swallows, they were already leaving in late August. After a summer of darting jet arrowheads swooping and… Continue reading The Daily: 28 August 2024
The Feast of the Assumption 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… Continue reading The Daily: 15 August 2024
Things to look forward to... a full moon I did my graduate work amid people who studied bits of foreign places like comets, exploded planets, asteroids, and moons. I have held pieces of our satellite moon in my hand and looked at the structure of its minerals through powerful lenses. My own work was focused… Continue reading The Daily: 14 August 2024
The Hay Moon went dark at 7:13am yesterday, over 36 hours before moonset today. So the 10th new moon of my year, the Blueberry Moon, should be visible as a thin crescent following the sun down to the western horizon this evening. This month is the second of the harvest moons and the first that… Continue reading The Daily: 5 August 2024
A Note on Time and Maples In my part of the world, today is almost exactly an hour shorter than the summer solstice. It took 44 days to drop this hour off the day, much of which time the days hardly changed. But now the changes are becoming more pronounced. It will only take another… Continue reading The Daily: 3 August 2024
Crom Dubh Sunday In many northern communities, July is a hungry month. The spring flush of greens and quick-growing roots like radishes and beets may still be trickling out of the garden, but most have bolted and run to seed. However, those that remain are long on fiber and short on calories, and little of… Continue reading The Daily: 28 July 2024
The Romans had concerns about drought at this time of year. Three very old festivals were grouped together at the end of July to honor deities who presided over watery things. The first was the Lucaria, the clearing of the groves. This was an ancient observance even in Varro's time (116-27 BCE), and little is… Continue reading The Daily: 25 July 2024
