Waiting

From seed, to seedling, to baby plant, to plant with flower bud, to a beautiful flower. It all takes patience. You wait for the seedling to emerge, you wait for the plant to grow. You watch for the flower bud to emerge, then to slowly expand and open into something truly lovely. It amazes me that a tight green ball opens into a beautiful yellow and orange flower. How was all of that inside? Here is a photo of a Gazania plant. This poor plant was a victim of Peter Rabbit. It was close to maturity when Peter decided to eat it. All that was left was the very bottom leaves. I put a cut out milk carton around the plant and hoped it might regrow.



To my amazement, it did grow. And yesterday as I looked out the window I saw this beautiful yellow flower. I got out my camera and went to take some photo's. I love looking at the patterns within a flower. I know in geometry class way back in high school they taught about flowers and their patterns. I can't remember much about that but I know that there are actual mathematical formulas that go with the patterns found in flowers.

Here is a question for you. Do you know what color the Mum flower is going to be? I think for this plant it will be an orange color. You can see in this photo that the flower petals have stared to form, you can also see the first tight green flower buds. Each day as I go out the flowers are closer to opening. It is fun to watch and see just what will appear.

I think that this plant will have a light purple

flower with a yellow center. Perhaps it may even be pink.

Here is a nice dark pink/maroon color, when totally open I think there will be a yellow middle.

In this photo you can see all the stages of the flower except the fully mature flower. They are going to be so beautiful.

I went to the Resume and Cover letter class at the One stop re-employment center today. I think there might have been 35 people there. You had both men and women, older people as well as young. Some people were dressed up and professional looking and others were in their jeans and T-Shirts. I'm amazed by people who have tattoo's and face piercings, or dreadlocks. In this economy I think you would want to look as clean cut as possible but perhaps I'm wrong. There were some good tips. Make a master resume where you put everything about you and your careers on. From this you then can make target resumes for the places you want to apply.

The big No: Do not mass mail your resume. If your resume is not targeted to a specific job at a company it will be thrown away.

You always need an objective. Here is an objective: Seeks job as receptionist at veterinary hospital!

Always have a cover letter to go with your resume. The cover letter should not contain information found in the resume. There are three parts to the cover letter. Introduction(who you are and what job you are applying for), Body(your skills and how you would be best candidate for job), concluding paragraph(thank for time,look forward to meeting with you to discuss employment). This should only be about 1/2 a page long.

When you make a resume use key words from the actual add you are applying for. Especially if you apply on line as most places have a computer scan the resumes and if you don't have their key words your resume will be rejected.

A resume gets you in the door. It will not get you the job. If you apply it is OK to call a week later to see if they received your resume. Also if applying on line look to the top left hand screen for https: If there is no s then you are not on a secure site and anyone can see your information. This is when you would call and say "hey I'd like to apply but your site is not secure."

Another tip have a signature CAR for every job you have had. CAR stand for Challenge, Action, Result.

Here is a CAR for my library job: The challenge was that every time a substitute or new volunteer put books away they did not fully understand that they needed to check the authors name and have the same authors together. As a result many books were placed in the wrong spot. My action to help keep this from happening was to relabel the books with the full author name. Once this was done the substitutes and volunteers were able to put the books away quicker and with less books being put in the wrong space.

Did you know that anyone can go to the re-employment classes? You don't have to be unemployed. Also if you learn that you will be losing your job you can go before you lose it and get help and start the grant process. These things would have been nice to know. Think of how much further along I would be. Now I just need to find some friends who are good with resumes to look mine over.

I have applied at Kohl's. It is my favorite clothing store. I often say I'm a Kohl's girl. All my families clothing comes from this store. I like their brands, I like their credit card. So perhaps I will get a job. They are hiring and they need cashiers. Which was the position I applied for. I know I would be very happy working at Kohl's and I could definitely sell their credit card. As the saying goes "The more you know the more you Kohl's! So wish me luck.