Putting together a portfolio

To continue on with the job search-as I am looking for work as a peer counselor, my own job counselor has suggested that I begin to think about teaching life skills to others. He looked at my real life experience, my life style and my health situations and found things of value there. Its kind of hard to think that what I do by rote is something others have no idea about.

He told me that I would be surprised to find out how many people couldn't hem a pair of pants, know how to dress appropriately for interviews, basic gardening, cooking, budgeting,  and other self sufficiency skills.

So I decided that even though I am not at all ready to teach anything to anybody right now, I am going to get ready to do so in the future.  I am  starting to gather my thoughts on this now while I have a bit of  unemployed time on my hands.

To that end, I naturally thought of an online portfolio of sorts-a blog. lol. One that isn't as personal or eclectic as this one is. I decided to keep this one going and will direct readers from here to there as appropriate-per article. I hope that makes sense. I am not always great at keeping two blogs at once but this is a bit different. Content for the other blog is going to be put together in a far less spontaneous way than this blog-it will require time and effort so it will likely only be a once a week thing.

The new blog is on wordpress as I find that it looks much more professional and its simple enough to migrate to a paid site with the same company when I am more organized. Its still a personal blog-peer counselors are hired on the merit of their life experience after all-there is no shame in admitting to things like depression and anxiety or other human feelings provided that they are being dealt with in a positive way.

However its still a portfolio and so I will be more selective about content there. Its a work in progress now but  I am providing a link if anybody is curious. I am relearning the wordpress application-its changed a little bit since many years ago when I had a blog there.
The name is Act Two: Life
Wish me luck on it.

Stay At Home Mom and Homesteader Going Back To Work

Its scary. I spend time being excited and anxious. Some of me wants to back down and find another hole to hide in. Thats how it feels to decide to re-enter the work force after so many years away. I don't believe my fear is uncommon actually. The world changed while I raised my kids. I spent time being very ill. Then we bought the farmette and that took a chunk of dedication too. Kids off to college and on their own now and a husband that needs my caretaking skills too but I am ready to be a part time worker and part time caretaker. My skills may or may not have become obsolete. It just depends on what I am looking to do with my life now.

I can say that I have no choice but I began the process before my husbands accident led to the complications that have brought us to yet one more frightening economic crisis. We will survive because that is what we do but this time, I want to see the process as something positive.

I began this blog with the intention of talking more about spiritual issues and while I still am interested in doing so, I have decided to play possum a bit on that topic  to a degree because of the job search. That made it a little awkward to have this particular blog and I wasn't inspired to write because I had a plan for my writing but once again it got side tracked by life. Lol.
 I think I get it now, okay? 

Rather than drop blogging altogether I am going to document my process of re-entering the work force as a handicapped person who is going to be 53 years old and whose education and experience is on the eclectic side.
The flip side of this coin is that because we are in a pickle financially once again, we will be economizing a bit at home and because of the health issues we will be dealing alot with diet and herbs.
Add to that the fact that we still have a homestead and are still very intersted in living green and wholesome…..

So what does this look like? 
I will be writing about the things that I hope will benefit others who are in the same or similar  boat as myself, re-entering the workforce, exploring our life skills and becoming a strong and postive person. I think that we get lost in taking care of others and our land so that we don't tend to the deeper details of ourselves sometimes.
I will also be writing a bit about those life skills gained as a mom, artist, craftsperson, homesteader, herbalist, etc.-because as a future peer counselor, I will be called upon to show and tell these skills at times. I am good at these things and so it will help me to write them out. These skills are varied-from how to dress for a job interview to canning and mending and saving money on groceries.

I am curious as to whether readers have felt the same anxiety that I have felt at re-entering the workforce? If you do go back to work after a long hiatus, what kind of job do you hope to land?

Creating Things

I cannot live without some creative time every single day. I know that some people can't find the time to do things like that but I have found through experience that if I don't make the time I begin to wither away on a soul level.  Here are some of the ongoing things I do:

I got the idea of this weaving from Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth. One day I would like to take a class with her if I can dedicate the time! I also was told by a friend to surround myself with hearts to remind me to come from love at all times-love thy enemy. So I began this project and then put it away because I am inclined to have too many ideas all at once!


For me, creativity means doing something by hand and sometimes I differentiate between art and craft while other times I don't.

I am not sure what this will be….table cloth? Curtain? Blanket? For whom? But I did like the idea of the colors and I adore working with thread. However as it gets bigger, the rows get longer and I get more impatient so I am trying to work through that!

And then there is the "paint/draw in 20 minutes or less" idea that I launched over the last few weeks. I have had a very hard time getting back into art since both my dad and my husband have nearly died in the last months but I am trying to at least do something every couple of days. I have focused on trying to get more and more abstract:

The colors on this are not accurate and no, its not finished. Watercolor ground with pastels. I have enjoyed thinking about birch trees lately-we drove around the state last week and into Chicago where birch trees are ancient and abundant. I was able to observe them by walking among them in the park district of that city where I think they might be under appreciated.

I will not have time for a few days to create unless I steal a few moments and I will be doing that. Its that important to me.
Have you taken time to create? What are you working on?

Forest Garden Inventory

The forest garden in summer of 2014

I was trying to remember what I have planted and what is volunteering in the forest garden since I didn't want to uproot anything. The picture above is  a little painful to look at if you are used to having tidy lawn with rows of petunias but to me, it announced success!
On each side of the image is a pole bean plant that I grew on trellis's as I want to phaze out annuals. The rest is Queens Annes Lace-I haven't eaten it yet as I am not sure at what stage its edible. When I pull it, I smell carrot-which makes sense as this is the grandmother of that particular vegetable.

Here is a list:
Pear
Peach
Blueberry
Sea Berry
Goji Berry
Violet
Walking Onion
Jerusalem Artichoke
Kiwi
St. Johns Wart
Asparagus
Nettles
Chamomile
Groundnut
Horseradish
Rhubarb
Witch Hazel
purslane
Lambs Quarters

I feel like I'm missing something but I'll soon find out if that is true.
By far the biggest challenge for us is how weedy the area can get in no time. Here is a long shot of me picking pole beans just to show you what happens on our land if we ignore it.

I guarantee that the weeds won't go away. Infact I can write an entire post on them alone and why they should stay. I might when I can take photos. Stay tuned.

My Forest Gardens First Year Pictures

The pictures here are not organized in any particular way but I wanted to show where we left off last year after an initial planting frenzy. This will help me think through what needs to be done this spring and summer and hopefully show readers that a "forest garden" can be anything that fits into a persons land, lifestyle and dietary needs. I am not strict at all about the rules myself at this time. 

This is the space I began working on last year. We fenced it off to keep out the chickens. The tree at the back in the center is a black walnut tree and it produces alot of the nuts! The tree on the left is a spruce and I use the tips for tea or to add to cookies. I hope to be able to collect pitch eventually too. The rockery on the right front is actually further away than it looks. That is my herb garden.

When I talk about having weeds, this is what I mean. The frame here is the roof of a gazebo I used to use to garden in the shade but the wind finally destroyed the legs so now the roof is a frame that we will use as a hoop house some day. What is growing on purpose here is berries-seaberries and goji. Seaberries should do well. Goji? Not sure-I hear lots of contradictory information on zones for that one. We shall see. 

This is towards the front of the forest garden. My husband wanted to contain the weeds so he built a frame for the rhubarb-a perrenial in our area. You see a peach tree and in the center is the chamomile that I am naturalizing. Chamomile reseeds itself but its anybodies guess as to where the seeds will land and grow. I only know that I will have chamomile in the vicinity again.  

We also built a raised bed for asparagus. This is to the right if you look at the top picture. This also divides the "forest garden" with the annual one my husband is in charge of (tomato cages to the left of the pictures. We expanded the fencing. We then planted basil in the cinder blocks-not sure that it was the best way to go-the basil thrived but its growth was stunted. 

This is actually at the back right corner of the fence and its Walking Onion-a plant that was on our land when we got here but in an odd spot so I transplanted some of it here. Walking Onion propagates by bending its seed heads down to the grown and dropping them in a new spot-thereby traveling all over a property in time. We eat the greens and the bulbs. They are perrenial to our area. 

I think that I will try to use my husbands GoPro to document this project rather than using photos as its a little hard to orient people without a map of what is happening. There is much more planted in the area and I am even expanding into the annual garden area because my goal was to have food even as we are too old to garden in the future. To that end, I'd like to phaze out most annuals over time. 

I was outside cleaning up the garden yesterday after a long winter and I noticed how easy it was to actually tidy up in comparison to an annual garden! That is an added bonus to me. 

I welcome your comments on this project and your advise! What to do with such prolific weeds? 

Perpetual Onions

These spring onion roots were replanted in our kitchen in Chicago a couple of years ago as an experiment because I had read that they will regrow up to 5 times. I think that most grew 3 times in the planter and one grew 4 and another 5 times.  Not bad.

Ever since then, I have grown spring onions in this way. I buy them in a store and cut off the roots and replant them. I do this because I have poor luck with onion seeds.

I will be using some older photos for a few posts as somehow, I have lost a set of rechargable batteries so had to remove them from my camera to use on my keyboard. I will have to purchase more rechargeables next time I am in town.
Still catching up after being away for a week so bare with me please:)

Away and Back

I didn't have time to write that I was going away for a week to see both children-one in each direction (North and South) for their 22 nd birthdays.
We got back last night (today is their actual birthdate) and boy are we both thrilled to be hear! It was alot of driving and sitting around which is surprisingly exhausting.
So we are back to the routine of life. We left and the grass was brown. Now its green. I will be outside exploring today and perhaps will have things to say tomorrow.
See you then.