Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
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
All around the globe, these are days of balance. For much of the planet’s midsection, this is not a big change, but it is a shift, usually between rainy and dry seasons. For the South, summer is approaching and it is finally getting warm again, while up North, we’re heading into winter. But South or… Continue reading Balanced Time
There is an oldish adage among writers that claims that you almost always have to write the book that you want to read. I don’t know how true that is of fiction. I have a very difficult time coming up with narratives that I like and that have not yet been written, and I’ve read… Continue reading How Not to Garden
Lately, I've been musing on the debate between those who claim that human nature is inherently selfish and those who say that we are oriented to cooperation and care. I am beginning to think that this is artificial, that the drive to name our nature is, in fact, an urge to excuse our actions. It… Continue reading The Wednesday Word: 18 August 2021
It’s planting season! And here you thought it was harvest, right? You’d be forgiven for thinking that. There is very little talk about autumn planting. For that matter, there’s also very little talk of spring harvests. But both are integral to having a food supply all year long. If you don’t have a harvest of… Continue reading Autumn Planting
Sunflowers & morning glories in August This is my favorite time of the year. There is the food, the cooling temperatures, and the lengthening night. But there are also the best flowers! This is the garden I wait for all year long. Sunflowers to asters, these are the flowers that speak to me. They are… Continue reading Language of Flowers for Ecologists — Autumnal Hues
This time of year normally sees an explosion of garden productivity. There are baskets of veg every day, mostly summer squash and tomatoes. This year has not been good in my garden, but then this is the first garden in this home. I have learned what not to do and made adjustments in the master… Continue reading Ratatouille
I am engaged in building a future for my kids out of this mess of a present, largely created by my parents' generation. One of the most wearing aspects of this project is not giving in to despair. Merely seeing what might be good — or even survivable — is difficult. So from time to… Continue reading Lughnasadh 2041
Because there isn’t an in between in this age of extremes, Vermont has gone from drought to deluge in one week. The heat has broken. Instead, there is a clammy chill that settles in the joints and swells doors well past sticky — there is much kicking involved in leaving the house. I can’t hang… Continue reading The Wednesday Word: 14 July 2021
The front bank. I have an awkward garden, an awkward property actually. I have a house on the east side of the road. In front of the house is a bank at about a 75° downward slope. That is, it’s more like a cliff than a slope. At its highest, it is about eight feet… Continue reading A Xeriscape in Vermont
