Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
The sweet corn harvest is late here in Vermont. We haven't seen the guy with the pick-up full of corn at the traffic circle. No cubic yard bins of corn at the grocery stores. Very little at the farmers' markets. The orchard I frequent announced that they have corn, but I haven't made it up… Continue reading The Daily: 18 August 2025
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 2025
Lammas It's the probably not-terribly-ancient festival of bread, Lammas, Hlaf-mas, Loaf Mass. This holiday is possibly an English variant on the Irish first fruits and fair festival of Lughnasadh, but compacted into one day and generally lacking any ritual or narrative. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, churches in East Anglia constructed elaborate… Continue reading The Daily: 2 August 2025
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
Things to look forward to... getting things done The weeds on the house side of the road had gotten ahead of me. I have been pulling crabgrass and wild clematis out of the veg garden a little every day. I also laid down more cardboard between the beds and then covered that with mulch. This… Continue reading The Daily: 21 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
So... I said I would have a real stroke when the emergency room bill came in... Well, it arrived today. I vastly underestimated it. I almost vomited. It was so outrageous I had to share... because I'm not the only one... The grand total was about $13,000... to tell me I had heat stroke. Which… Continue reading The Daily: 7 August, Epilogue
Things to look forward to... a drink of water About a month ago, in fact, the weekend before the second flooding, it was hot. Of course it was hot. And very humid. Of course that too. That's what we get these days. Hot and humid. For days and days and days and no relief even… Continue reading The Daily: 7 August 2024
Lammas It's the probably not-terribly-ancient festival of bread, Lammas, Hlaf-mas, Loaf Mass. This holiday is possibly an English variant on the Irish first fruits and fair festival of Lughnasadh, but compacted into one day and generally lacking any ritual or narrative. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, churches in East Anglia constructed elaborate… Continue reading The Daily: 2 August 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 