Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
I read the entry for the month of January in the Vermont Almanac (v. III) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that January 2022 was much colder than average — almost 7°F colder — and very much colder than average for the last twenty years. It did not make the list for top ten coldest… Continue reading The Daily: 19 January 2023
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. — Martin Luther King Jr Today we remember Martin Luther King Jr. His birthday is actually the 15th, but in recent times our culture has decided to stick holidays to the closest Monday so that there is always an actual… Continue reading The Daily: 16 January 2023
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me Nine ladies dancing... Have you noticed that, after what is largely food on the wing, the gifts given on the last several days of the song take a decidedly musical bent? Nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming.… Continue reading The Daily: 2 January 2023
for 23 December 2022 The nearer the new moon to Christmas Day, the harder the winter. — folk wisdom quoted in The Hedge Witch Book of Days by Mandy Mitchell Elliott The moon was dark at 5:17am this morning. Just because it seems pertinent, I'm going to note that both the moon and the sun… Continue reading The Daily
for 21 December 2022 Green Man in the cold morning light Today, 21 December 2022, the sun appears to stand still at its most southern point at 4:48pm. We call this period of slow change, where day length changes incrementally and then not at all, the solstice, the “sun pause”. In the Northern Hemisphere, this… Continue reading The Daily
for 15 December 2022 Wasn't I just complaining about the unseasonable warmth? I take it back... It's 7°F as I type this. The heater has been running near continuously. Skies are dark and low, with the tops of the western mountains lost in cloud. There is snow on the ground, but it's grey also. However,… Continue reading The Daily
for 10 December 2022 10 December 1830 is Emily Dickinson's birth-date. In her honor, you might spend the day penning obscure poetry and witticisms. Or you could fall down the rabbit hole that is the search for the "real Emily", a person born nearly 200 years ago today. Apparently, there are questions of authenticity, not… Continue reading The Daily
for 8 December 2022 Green in December fills the graveyard. — folklore quoted in the Hedge Witch Book of Days Mandy Mitchell (Weiser Books, 2014) The Winter Sleep Moon is past full and now waning. At my latitude, we've hit the earliest sunsets of the year, 4:11pm. It's dark by the time I leave work.… Continue reading The Daily
19 November 2022 This weather is not doing things by half, I'll give it that. We went from the longest growing season on record — 181 days, theoretically long enough to grow even protracted growing season veg like okra — with the official first frost date ringing in at 28 October, to... well, there's a… Continue reading The Daily
16 November 2022 I learned a fun medical thing today. Once COVID has had its way with your internal organs, apparently any infection that causes inflammation can trigger echoes of COVID. I started to think that this might be the case when I had strep and it felt disturbingly like the COVID I'd just shaken… Continue reading The Daily
By My Solitary Hearth 