Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
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
The eighth moon is the Strawberry Moon and, yes, strawberries are bountiful this month — the first real fruit harvest. (I don’t count that rhubarb stuff… it’s chard, not fruit.) While planting and harvesting both happen all year long, this is the month when there is a shift from predominantly planting activities to mainly harvest… Continue reading Midsummer Strawberry Moon
Penstemon in the herb bed. It is Midsummer and as promised here is another list of essential plants for the ecological garden, my Language of Flowers. This list has more lore and fewer entries as I decided to break the growing season into three sections rather than two. Too many plants bloom after May to… Continue reading The Midsummer Garden
Well, this is unexpected. Here I thought I’d planted filet beans. Avast, ye mildewed squash! Prepare to be boarded! Been over a century. New round of seeds every year for more the one hundred generations. And these changelings still crop up. They used to say plastic was the most enduring ill from those people. And… Continue reading Beans (Winifred Mumbles)
Moving house is hard on a body. It’s hard on the planet’s body as well as mine, maybe more so. I have never seen statistics on this sort of thing, other than a passing reference claiming divorced couples create over twice the waste they generated when married — which I sincerely believe is true. I… Continue reading Putting Down Roots
I planted apple trees today. They arrived a couple weeks before we were to move. I had ordered them last summer and forgotten about them entirely. However, I had no intention of putting them in the ground that would soon be yet another past garden. Not least because I didn’t have time to do that.… Continue reading How To Start Over
By My Solitary Hearth 