Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
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, even those that remain are long on fiber and short on calories, and little of the spring… Continue reading The Daily: 30 July 2023
I took large chunks of the weekend — in which I could not do much vigorous work outside for all the Canadian smoke and could not write much for all the bugs in this machine — to clean up my house. (I think it's actually not this machine but something iCloud-derived because it's affecting my… Continue reading The Daily: 24 July 2023
Tuesday morning there was brown fog. Is is still smog when the smoke is from wildfires that are burning hundreds of miles away? Do we need a new term for foreign smoke and local fog blanketing a largely rural region? I looked out over the valley and couldn't see more than a couple blocks. It… Continue reading The Daily: 19 July 2023
Yesterday, the Strawberry Moon went dark at 2:32 in the afternoon. So today begins the Hay Moon. I'm not sure how much hay-making we'll be doing in New England. Apart from the storms of the past week, it's been wet since early June, and before that it was very dry and very cold. In the… Continue reading The Daily: 18 July 2023
St Swithin's Day St Swithin's day, if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain; St Swithin's day, if thou be fair, For forty days 'twill rain na mair. I've heard it said that great strawberries hardly ever happen in Vermont. I even know a guy who used to drive to the north border… Continue reading The Daily: 15 July 2023
Having water destroy much of the state you live in —taking not the biblical 40 days to wreak havoc, but something like 8 hours — makes one rather conscious of adaptions that might be made to one's living arrangements. It's not good enough to clean up the mess and put it all back how it… Continue reading The Daily: 14 July 2023
This is just to let you all know that I'm more or less fine. My home is well above flood levels, though my basement has some good puddles and the garage is a mud flat. However, my employer is, along with the rest of downtown, underwater. I'm sure some of you have seen images from… Continue reading The Daily: addendum for 11 July
The Weather Well, today is a fun example of the new normal... Vermont is under flash flood warnings for the next 24 hours. Yes, that is all of Vermont. Many towns are being evacuated. Yes, whole towns. My garage had 3 inches of standing water this morning. It got up to about 5 inches before… Continue reading The Daily: 11 July 2023
I just got done reading a horror story. Or, maybe it's not supposed to be a horror story, but it sure gave me nightmares. Water Witches by Chris Bohjalian (1995, Simon and Schuster) is the story of a Vermont attorney and lobbyist who learns the hard way that what he does to make money is… Continue reading The Daily: 29 June 2023
Tonight is the night that Shakespeare had faeries running amok in the woods around Athens. This is Midsummer's Night, tomorrow being Midsummer. Folklore has it that this is the best time to go find the Good Folk, though lore also makes it pretty clear that you may be in for trouble if you do. I… Continue reading The Daily: 23 June 23
By My Solitary Hearth 