Accident out front

 During the 37 years I've lived here, there have been more than a few accidents on the road out front.  A slight curve just before you get to my house causes drivers to misjudge or not decrease their speed...and they're off the road. Several times taking our mailbox down as well.

I wasn't really surprised to hear an accident happen out front just before bedtime recently.

What was surprising was the amount of banging and crashing sounds I could hear and how long the sounds lasted.

I turned off the lights in the house to see better what had happened in the dark outside.

I could see cars stopped and people moving quickly on the road, so I assumed someone had phoned in the emergency.

Later, after police, fire trucks, and ambulances arrived, I walked out to see just what had happened.

It turns out that two vehicles had side swiped, then both had rolled over. One was just past my driveway, and the other was in the ditch just past my other driveway. Both were upside-down.

The next morning, I went out to take a look.

My mailbox had been here. The dark spot on the right is where the pick up truck overturned.

Part of my mailbox...

And another part...

And another...

Looking to the left of the driveway...

Here is to the left of the other driveway with the pole of the other destroyed mailbox.

The other vehicle rolled down to the tree line here. No one lost their life but this driver was taken to the hospital with head injuries.

Of course with the vehicle rolling like that there was a lot of broken plastic, glass and metal parts left behind after they towed the vehicle. Also, just a lot of contents from the vehicle...trash, clothing, wrenches, old mail and forth...even a big spring and the vehicle bumper with license plate attached.

The Sasquatch and I worked a long while picking stuff up and filled a garbage bin. The police came to pick up the license plate.

Fortunately we were able to get the insurance company info to pay for mailbox replacements.

The Saquatch got them put back up. A nice new post set with a special spray foam.

And here's my new mailbox.  Long may it stand!

I picked up the police report for insurance info.

It looks like the injured person, who caused the accident was suspected of both alcohol and drug use.

I'm glad things were not worse for those involved.  

Hearing a car crash is such a strange sound...it's like no other. A loud hollow metal crunching sound.  Not a sound I want to hear again.

Etown quilt show

 This yearly quilt show in Elizabethtown is one I really look forward too.  It is held by a local quilt guild there, Stitchers Quilt Giuld, a large active group.

I've considered joining that group but their meetings are in the evenings and like others my age, I don't like to drive far after dark.

Anyhow, two of my friends from Crazy Quilters went with me to the quilt show on opening day.

After paying the $6 admission, our first stop was their "General Store"...a huge offering of used books, patterns, donated fabric and more.

Cheap prices! It's hard not to load up!  

We made a quick tip back to the car to leave our purchases, then on to the rest of the show.

Next, we passed through the hall with the prize basket offerings. 

I have a negative never-win attitude with these type of things, but Isolde and Susan each bought a few tickets to enter the drawings.

Later, I found out that Isolde won one of the prizes. That's the second time for her!

Then, it was time to look at all the quilts entered.  This one was a favorite and a purple and blue ribbon winner.

Another favorite of mine.

A couple of pumpkin theme ones that caught my eye.

And a Christmas tree one there on the right that I'd like to make with some of my Christmas fabrics.

There were several vendors with goods for sale...machines, patterns, sewing tools, fabrics.

A big booth by my favorite bargain fabric store...Whittles.

Even barn quilts available for purchase.

 More rows of quilts hanging to admire.

I like this one. I have the pattern.

A real beauty here! Wool applique.

This one would be a good one to make to use up scraps.

It was a good show and just the right size to be able to see everything and buy a couple of things.

Here's the fabrics I bought at the general store.

Going with friends made the show more enjoyable...discussing the different quilts and noticing things about them I might not have noticed otherwise. 

Seeing all those quilts made me feel inspired to get back to working on my own quilts!

About those grubs

 After that destructive summer storm back in June, the Sasquatch came across some interesting grubs while cutting the base of a broken tree.

They are big!  After checking around online, he determined they are the grub stage of the Eastern Hercules Beetle.  They remain in this stage (molting 3 times) for nearly two years.

Checking around inside the stump that remained, the Sasquatch found over 30 of these grubs living in there.  Eating the tree from the inside out.

The photo below is looking down into the cut off tree stump.  All of the dark brown stuff is their poop!  That's what happens with their high fiber diet!

This photo is also of the stump. You can see the channels they've carved out while eating the wood.

After doing the fact finding on the grubs, the Sasquatch felt bad about opening up their tree and making them easily available for raccoons and skunks to raid for a fat tasty snack.

He read online that they can be raised in containers...so he thought that might be an interesting project and picked out about 12 of them and put them in a square plastic tub with some of their litter.

You can actually buy food for them...a sort of broken down wood fiber, or you can buy wood pellets (made for heat stoves) and let them decompose with a bit of moisture.

So far, so good.  The grubs seem to be doing well. The Sasquatch also covered the stump opening as protection for the beetles left behind.

We haven't noticed these beetles around our home before but by a strange coincidence...the Sasquatch found a dead adult Hercules Beetle in a vacuum cleaner cannister that had been stored outside.

This was a female - so no horns.

There are actually online sellers for Hercules Beetles...grubs, live adults, and dead adults.

Anywhere from $15 to $50.  Who would imagine?

This photo is from a website...a male.  The adults are 2 to 3 inches long not counting the horn.  They only live about 3 to 6 months.

It will be interesting to watch these grubs change and develop. 

Random stuff

 Well, I have a few random photos but not enough to really tell the whole story on any particular thing.

My Dad always invited family members for a fish fry in August in years past.

Things change though and after the loss of several family members, we didn't have the gathering.  But, my older brother was interested in getting everyone (all 7 of us) together, so we decided to do an easy version of the fish fry at my house.

By easy, I mean we bought the fish already fried from Mike Linnigs...and the hush puppies from Moby Dick.

I made side dishes and dessert.  The meal was good and with no frying no one had a greasy mess to clean up.

The Sasquatch contributed to our enjoyment...with a batch of hand cranked homemade ice cream. Half the batch was vanilla and half was a really good mint chocolate chip!

His cat was interested in the ice cream making procedure. I'll bet she could smell the cream.  Her name is Kitty.

I guess I was focusing on getting things ready for the gathering that morning because later I looked down and saw I was wearing 2 different shoes (again).

Luckily, I had time to run up and change before anyone arrived.

One of my side dishes was broccoli casserole.  It tasted okay but had a sorry appearance. The cheese had separated and the dish was runny.

I had quite a bit left over.

So, the next day, I went with the theme of "runny-ness" and made it into a cheesy broccoli soup...and also threw in the leftover roasted veggies.

Nothing  wrong with that.

Oh, Deer

What's this??   One of my little Gingko trees snapped in half.

Looks like it just happened - the leaves are still green.

These deer look like the guilty parties.  With all the trees in the woods, why do they have to come into my yard and snap my trees off?

I just recently removed the mesh net that I had around this Gingko and another one.

I expected some leaves to be eaten but not total destruction of the tree.

I know it's probably useless but I put the top part of the tree back on the bottom and wrapped it with gorilla tape.  It's worth a try, anyway.

I've been working on my crocheted afghan in the twice-monthly needlework group meetings at the library.   

I started on it just to use up leftover yarn, but now I've had to buy more new yarn to be able to finish it.  Lucky the same yarn colors were still available.

I made a different sort of chili.  In order to try to keep the carbohydrates low, I only added a small amount of beans, then added cauliflower and black olives.

It's okay. I probably wouldn't use black olives in a soup again. 

 A mound of shredded cheddar and a dollop of sour cream in my bowl made it more like chili.

It's a big batch, with plenty to store in the freezer.  It will be nice to have on a cold winter day.

Finished that quilt

 Usually when I have a deadline for finishing up a quilt I have to drop everything else to finish it, or I am a few days or weeks late in getting it done.

Not so with this one. I have it done well before the wedding date at the end of September.

This quilt was a kit I ordered on clearance a while back. I have to say that the fabrics included are not the usual colors I work with, but it was fun trying something different.

This apricot colored fabric on the back happened to be a freebie. It was shipped by mistake with another online order and the company told me to keep it then sent the fabric I ordered too.

It was a good match for this quilt and I added the strip of leftover floral from the kit fabrics.

The quilt is for a young lady who works at our library. She hosts the Coffee Chat group I go to.  It's been fun listening to her wedding plans over these past months.

The quilt isn't really big enough for a queen bed but it's big enough to snuggle  under for a nap or for a friendly couple to  get cozy under while watching TV.

Maybe you can't see it in these photos but I did have some trouble with piecing this quilt.

There were lots of fabric layers when joining the blocks and things didn't line up perfectly.

I decided not to stress out too much over it. It's home made so for me, that means not perfect.

If I used this pattern again, I might use some narrow sashing between the blocks to better separate the fabric layers.

It was a fun pattern though and I liked how the instructions were to cut the floral motifs out of the border fabric to use for the center of the blocks.

I machine quilted this quilt with a spiral design.

I will take it in early before the next Coffee Chat. Hope she likes it!