was it the Pagan remark?

Decided to bring my blog back to where I started, name-wise anyway. A sort of rediscovering my roots and starting over with added knowledge and perhaps trying an alternate path to the one I found myself on.

Pixie is back to school on Tuesday, I’m done for my semester on Thursday and have a week and a half off to do nothing but job hunt. This has been the worst summer for finding work, I’m hoping the autumn brings me better luck because getting hosed in child support has made our situation go from really bad to worse. All I want is to be able to get by and complete my last 11 months of school, work study through school has been a joke…3 months and still nothing.

The garden harvest has been odd. This summer brought weather not conducive to tomatoes and cucumbers, all of our cucumbers failed miserably and the tomatoes are all still green. Squash on the other hand is overly abundant, we’ll have winter squash to last us years were it to last, dozens of acorn, baby blue hubbard and one other kind (I forget what I planted) in addition to lots of pumpkins, most are small and not fit for anything more than decoration but I’ve two Rouge Vif D’Etampes that have done well. The small ones are beautifully shaped and would make ideal jack o’lanterns were they larger, instead I’ll use some of the baby blue hubbards to make some “neep heads” for October decorating. Should the lovely pumpkins grow a bit more I could use them in cooking, not holding my breath though.

Corn is coming along, the stalks are 8 or 9 feet tall thanks to chicken manure and the abundant rains of the season. Pixie and I harvested the last of the potatoes yesterday, we planted fingerling-French and Red Finn Apple. The Red Finns are a weird looking tuber, bumpy and lumpy in a sort of weird, diseased looking way that is unappetizing to me so we’ll not grow them again next year. The French Fingerlings, as always, are beautiful and did very well.

The chickens are doing well, haven’t started molting yet though. Pixie has taken over feeding and letting them out each morning. Once sunset gets earlier she’ll be closing them up as well. My brother suggested paying her an allowance to motivate her but mean old mama opted for pure and simple blackmail-they are her chickens and if she wants to keep them then she has to tend them. Working so far.

August has flown by so quickly…it’s one of my least favorite months so I’m glad in a way…Hoping September (historically a crappy month for me despite it being my birthmonth) is the best so far, ready for good luck to come set up shop with us.

This has been a rough year in many ways..I’ve been cleaning house and trying to find some balance…this space is the next to gain my focus…stay tuned.

It’s up a week early…woohoo! enjoy!

Seasonal Kitchen

I spent an hour this morning harvesting the gargantuan bushes of catnip, feverfew and lemon balm for drying and winter use. The oregano needs a healthy chopping too. The harvest resulted in an enormous armful of green and scent. I’ve never had such abundance as we have this year. Tomorrow or Saturday I’ll be harvesting some St. Johns Wort, yarrow and borage.

I only wish I could share a photo but my camera lens is ailing and needs repair…darn it. So I will leave you with one of the happy recipients of a few sprigs of catnip….

Tomorrow I start back to school, in a massage therapy program. I am hoping this is the start of positive and wonderful things for Pixie and I. To leave behind the strife and stress we’ve lived with for the last year and a half +. While swimming with her today and watching and listening to her interact with others I noticed just how different she is from this time last year. She is happier, more secure and acting as a young child should. I am so happy and relieved to see this, she deserves so much better than she has had.

I’ve noticed the bramble berries are ripening, ready a month early, already black and ready for picking in some areas. Interesting. It gives me the opportunity for a banner crop and contents for blackberry chutney, a recipe I will be tinkering and concocting for my August Seasonal Kitchen column. Looking forward to it.

Simplewitch was noticing how Mother Nature is so generous with what gifts she gives us and I had to capture a couple gifts we have here. First off is the abundant St. Johns Wort, we also have burdock and mullein which blessedly managed to travel in soil with my transplants from our former home and came up this summer.

I will definitely be harvesting starting closer to the Full Moon, I read something years back, maybe it was native american in origin, but in any given season, if something is growing in abundance then harvest and keep it at the ready because a need will arise for it once out of season. I have found this to be true since I noticed Mullein growing in abundance at our former house. Kicked myself all winter for not harvesting and preparing it for remedies..lol

Seasonal Kitchen enjoy!! I have to get cracking on August’s recipes, this is where the recipe creating really takes off…woohoo!

also including an bonus, I whipped some of this up last night to toss in with pasta for the wee one and fresh greens for me. yum.

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 c. garlic scapes, roughly chopped
1/2 c. olive oil (more as needed)
1/2 c. nuts-walnuts, almonds or pine nuts
1/2 c. parmesan (asiago is strong but would work well as a half and half blend with parmesan)

Whizz all the above ingredients in a food processor until paste-like in consistency. Add additional olive oil to make it a smooth paste. For best flavor, store in a sealed container and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

Garden is thriving, a huge turn around from this time last year when the garden was only in about a week or two, potatoes are blooming and will be harvestable in another week or two! Radishes are overly abundant and everything is lush and lovely.

I start school in one week, going to take my year’s wait for nursing course to start and take a massage therapy diploma program, so by September of next year I’ll be a licensed massage therapist! (and a nursing student…lol)

We’re hanging on here, I’ve begun dating (eeps) and it’s few and far between as my one day a week when Pixie is with her father has now switched to a day I’ll have school…oh well, something will work out and so far I’ve been underwhelmed with the pickings out there…

I have yet to visit the local farmers market! We’ve been strapped for cash thanks to little to no child support coming in and my bad luck in finding work so the “splurge” of a farmers market takes a back seat to new shoes and necessities for the girl.

School is out! Pixie is thrilled to have the year behind her, I’m hoping to figure something out at some point as to how I can homeschool her again, she truly did not like public school and I hate having to put her in there. Hopefully a door will open soon! In the meantime she’s working this summer on various self-lead reports and projects. She’s reading a ton for school (a contest) and is researching and writing a report on lightning and thunder. She’ll be moving up to a new school in September, hopefully this one will offer more scholastic challenges for her.

All this garden porn reminds me to update my Etsy shop!

I’ve been adding more to my Etsy shop….lots of garden porn to be had

My Green Dream

and Pixie had her hair chopped off again, 11 more inches to Locks of Love….she loves her new ‘do and just in time for the horrible heat and humidity!!

May is zooming by in a blur, much of my outdoor work has been curtailed by the worst allergies ever, rough year for seasonal allergy sufferers in New England. Today was spent tilling the garden (by hand, not much progress made in a 20′ x50′ area) in the noonday sun. We’ve had fox cries heard in the evenings so I’ve finally finished up on the coop pen, well, nearly. My stepfather’s cordless screwdriver is crap, the battery loses it’s charge easily so slow going. The door is finally up but the pen is not yet complete overall, enough to keep the girls contained and make mornings and evenings easier than they have been.

Garden work is a bit choppy still, the job hunt and poor finances of late have me far too distracted. I’ve gone through the portion of back child support paid to me in February and have none to speak of since. Frustrating that in the last year I’ve only had one month where full support was paid. Pixie is in need of new shoes so I hope to get a job soon, have an employment agency appointment next week since my 38 job apps in 2 weeks have resulted in squat. I had hoped to sign on for an LNA course but with no money for living expenses a job is required and cuts into the class time. The health industry is where I need to go, guaranteed jobs, but this slow going to get there is beyond frustrating. My second semester grades were good, leaving me with a GPA of 3.70…woohoo! This next week I’ll sign up for some online classes through the local school, keep me busy and the brain active at any rate.

so…garden! potatoes are in and once the ground is tilled the rest will go in, corn, squashes, beans, basil basil basil, cukes and whatever else moves me. Tomatoes and peppers would be nice, could make some yummy sauces late summer. The “faery” herb garden is coming along, much of what got moved last spring and didn’t come up then is coming up now. Columbine and burdock especially. I had new lavender roots planted and they failed…darn…they were free so no complaining but disappointed nonetheless. I’ve added feverfew to the mix and a fennel plant in a far corner. The hawthorn transplanted nicely and now have a new home, so much in this corner and very peaceful.

Ahh the sun has set enough to go venture into the garden again.

oh and an ETA for the P.S. the Intro to Psych class I struggled and labored through? Got an A-…..woohoo! kept good company with my A-/A in my A&P lecture/lab.

After a month of issues with WP and Firefox I can once again access my dashboard…woohoo!

While I was gone Kinja decided to call it quits taking with it my resource for blogreading. grr.

So! Life here is good, I finished with school on Monday with my last two finals at that damn school. Now on to transferring to a college in town and changing my major. I’ve been getting this “creative/artistic/follow your bliss” vibe for awhile now but it doesn’t pay the bills or get Pixie and I into a house of our very own. So I will pursue nursing and find a way to balance life with creative endeavors on the side.

Pixie is doing well in school, she was featured in the spring concert tonight (go my girlie!) and did a great job. She’s still not happy with public school and neither am I. I long to homeschool her but still can’t see how to make that happen so in the meantime she gets a mental health day each month and we supplement with homeschooling to keep her challenged. This summer I am hoping to get her into a week of art camp, she’s thrilled.

On the garden front, we have the beds ready and potatoes planted as well as some chard and spinach closer to the house. My local herb source closed after decades in business, I am crushed. So now to find something else and build my herb garden which is now going to be a faery garden, herbs and flowers and tended by the both of us, hopefully.

Summer ahead, first task is to find a job. Then comes registering for summer classes, building a pen for the chicken coop and getting the rest of the garden in. For fun we’ll be trekking to western MA to visit and help a friend get her green goodies into the ground, we’ll spend a week in late July at Hermit Island and hopefully hit a Ren Faire or three. I just spent a long weekend with a former exchange student that stayed with my family. She’s my other sister and it was so good to see her again, it’s been nearly 19 years! She and her family are currently living in the south for two years while her husband works here and Pixie and I will be flying down this fall to meet her family. We’re very excited. Since my LPN program doesn’t start until January I’ll have more flexibility to do more things, providing I have a job of course. The ex is useless in the child support area so we’ve been struggling these last seven months and Pixie is growing like a weed. I have fabric purchased to make her dresses and skirts for Summer, will help. Despite the $$ concerns we have a very good life, we are happy, healthy and blessed so can’t complain.