Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Floralia Cosiddetta Flora from the Villa di Arianna in Stabiae near Pompeii, 1st century Roman fresco The festival of Floralia is a very old holiday. It honors Flora, the Roman idea of fertility that is embodied in spring flowers. Flora is one of the oldest deities in the Roman pantheon. She is older than Rome,… Continue reading The Daily: 27 April 2025
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 is Robigalia, an ancient Roman festival intended to propitiate the god — or demon — of wheat rust and thus ensure a good harvest. These disparate themes may actually be… Continue reading The Daily: 25 April 2025
We flirted briefly with temperatures above 60°F on Saturday, though it also rained the entire day with gusty winds from every direction, making it not entirely pleasant garden weather. Sunday was dry but much cooler, never topping 50° though it was sunny in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it was also even more windy, the kind of… Continue reading The Daily: 21 April 2025
The Greenleaf Moon is full today at 8:22pm. I haven't said much about this moon cycle because it hasn't felt very accurate this year. In the past, you could count on the sugar season ending when this moon is new and new leaves washing the bare trees in spring green. Some years there are apple… Continue reading The Daily: 12 April 2025
Lady Day March 25th is Lady Day. This is another Marian holiday which incorporated older pagan traditions — in this case the New Year celebrations which fell on 25 March before Julius Caesar shifted the Roman observance to the beginning of January. Lady Day is nine months before December 25th, so you can probably figure… Continue reading The Daily: 25 March 2025
March is still lion-ing, no sign of that lamb at all, though we have entered Aries... Most of the snow melted in a day of cold rain which filled the rivers to just shy of flood stage. The next day it froze and covered the ground in white, which melted by the end of the… Continue reading The Daily: 24 March 2025
World Water Day is 22 March 2025. This annual observance was organized by the United Nations in 1993 to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and to promote sustainable freshwater management. Each year a different theme is chosen, centered on topics relevant to clean water, sanitation and hygiene. The theme for 2025 is Save… Continue reading The Daily: 22 March 2025
The Season of Renewal This year, the Vernal Equinox happens on March 20th at 5:01am. This is, I think, the most nebulous of the solar festivals. Yes, it does mark an actual solar event, but it’s not the one we typically hear about. It’s not much of an event at all. This festival is less… Continue reading The Daily: 20 March 2025
If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you become better yourself. — Tolstoy in his Calendar of Wisdom on 17… Continue reading The Daily: 17 March 2025
The fifth moon of my solar year is the Sap Moon, which was spectacularly full in full eclipse at 2:55am this morning. The fifth moon is new between 24 February and 24 March, full between 10 March and 7 April. This is a period of rapid change. The Sap Moon rarely sees the same weather from… Continue reading The Daily: 14 March 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 