Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
The third moon in my lunar year is the Wolf Moon. It is new between 28 December and 25 January and full between 11 January and 8 February. This is the coldest time of year in the North. It is when stores of food are running low and hunger is stalking every home. This inhospitable… Continue reading The Full Wolf Moon
It’s been exactly one year since I started this online writing endeavor. I have written somewhere north of 300,000 words in over 220 posts. I have hundreds of regular readers between this blog and the several newsletters and aggregators who repost these essays and stories, a fact that just boggles. These are people who are… Continue reading Old and New
Green Man in the cold morning light Today, 20 December 2021, the sun appears to stand still at its most southern point. 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 is the winter solstice, the time… Continue reading Sun Stands Still
The predicted snow arrived last night. It is mostly over now. First snow doesn't linger, though the cold still steals into the gaps around these old windows. I'm looking out on a damp grey world, more than halfway to winter sleep. But lilacs and oaks seem caught unawares, with green and yellow leaves hanging limp.… Continue reading Wednesday Word: 17 November
In which there are beavers... The first moon of the lunar year begins in the wee hours of 5 November. This is my Winter Sleep Moon. The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which roughly uses Backwoods traditional names for lunations, calls the moon that is full in November the Beaver Moon. The beaver lodge in a pond… Continue reading Winter Sleep Moon
Long an irksome pull at the Math Lady lodged in my left brain, I decided I’d had enough with moon dis-logic. It is time for an intervention. Moon 101 for writers of all shades. Here is the imagery that pushed Math Lady over the edge: Facing south in the evening, she “looked over her shoulder… Continue reading A Moon Intervention
It's dark. I know this happens every year. Intellectually, I am good with the decreasing daylight. I welcome the idea of more time to stew in the starlight, less time of constant chop chop chop in the sun. I welcome the idea... but I'm a bit more conflicted on the practical application. Especially when rain… Continue reading Wednesday Word: 6 October 2021
4 October is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. You might know him as the irreverent but apt moniker, St Francis of the Birdbath, because that is where many of us encounter him. Bare-headed with the monk's tonsure, dressed in rough robes and coarse rope belting, he stands with one palm out, feeding… Continue reading St Francis of the Birdbath
Time is telescoping again. I’m fairly certain I was just writing about Lughnasadh a few days ago, and here it is the autumnal equinox. The Full Harvest Moon will have risen and set by the time you read this. The blueberry bushes are picked bare; peaches are a sweet memory; tomatoes are just an annoyance… Continue reading Celebrating Harvest Home
A week or so ago the first of the maples were clearly changing colors. Maples seem to need more hours of daylight than most other trees. When day length is less than 14 hours, maples send their topmost leaves to sleep. This happens in the second week of August at Vermont latitudes. So by the… Continue reading Wednesday Word: 8 September 2021
By My Solitary Hearth 