Some goodies from a friend......

Before I show these pretty pieces, let me first apologize that I've not been able to keep up with all of your blogs lately. I just checked my blog reader and I am hopelessly behind.......too much going on with trying to sift through what needs to be done regarding restoring our house to "normal" after the tree incident. I doubt we'll be back to "normal" until about mid-September....will do more of an update on this in a day or two (once I have full details). So...now onto my pretty goodies.......

Ev, my non-sewing and non-blogging friend from Michigan sent me a package that contained these nicely embroidered linens. I can tell the smaller flowers were done by hand. The larger flowers (on the bigger linen piece) are appliqued onto the fabric and either they were done by machine or else someone had a very exacting hand with the needle. No matter how they were made, I really love them. Thanks, Ev!!! I will treasure these as they were such a nice surprise from you and I appreciate your thinking of me when you discovered these.

Fruits and veggies, anyone?

As promised, here are some shots I took of fruits and veggies at the recent State Fair. You can click to enlarge them but you'll probably have to scroll around to see the whole photo, as these were also taken with the camera setting the way hubby set it for the animal photos yesterday....that is LARGE!!!

Luscious peaches........
Thinking ahead to fall with the pumpkinsl......

And here are a few of the nice arrangements made with fresh produce......I always enjoy seeing these (even more than the floral arrangements)...and the veggies and fruit used in them are always SO perfect that they almost don't look real.....but they are! Do you have a favorite arrangment here?

Animals at the State Fair.......

A post by a blogging friend the other day (of her county fair) reminded me that I'd not posted any of the animal photos from our State Fair. So...here are a few for you to enjoy......I love how the 4-H kids are so dedicated to them...but didn't get photos of any of the kids! (Our horse photos didn't come out, either, from the jumping competition....too blurry. Hubby had camera set on high res, too...so these look awful here if you try to enlarge them....sorry about that!)
Gotta love this face........

This one was running down the aisle and didn't realize he was being led toward the "pig" bathing area! I didn't stick around to see if he (she??) was happy about it or not.Not sure if these two are really close buddies or they were just forced to be friendly from sleeping in such close quarters.This was Lynn....1 year old....who wanted back IN her enclosure by her food!I found this to be very funny.....the sheep were watching TV while being sheared. Will post the last of my State Fair photos tomorrow......some WONDERFUL fruit and veggie pictures. I love those displays!!!

GREAT mail day and update on tree incident....

To update you on the tree incident......the land owner is cutting down TODAY 3 of the 6 potentially hazardous trees. Said they can't all be cut because then others might want trees cut, too....BUT...in my opinion, others haven't had one of his trees come down on their house, so that should make a difference. At least having 3 of the trees down is better than none, though, so for now, I'll have to settle for that. The insurance company said the contractor we wanted is on their Preferred Contractor list, which is great....and they have already come out to begin the assessment. If things go as planned and the weather is okay, work should start next Monday. thanks to all of you for the very supportive comments and emails. You made a scary, bad situation a lot better for me....really, you did. So...now onto my mail goodies.

Yesterday was a great mail day for me! I got 3 packages. Can you believe it??? I am SO lucky to have such great blogging friends. First of all, I got the August cottage for the year-long cottage swap. This one was made by Jean (click HERE for her blog). She told us she was taking photos of each of us in our beach attire and putting them in our cottage windows, which I thought was a super-wonderful idea. I look pretty darned good, don't I? Click photo to see me in greater detail!!! (And Kaye.....you can attest to the fact that this is JUST the way I look at the pool, right??? LOL)Next, is a package I got from Sandi. (Click HERE for her quilting blog.) She sent this great cookbook from the library in her hometown are of Iowa. I love those kinds of cookbooks with recipes by REAL PEOPLE instead of all kinds of fancy, gourmet stuff. Thanks, Sandi, for thinking of me.The third package was from "Upstate Lisa". (Click HERE for her blog.) She does terrific dying of fabrics and has been my "mentor" for when I get ready to leap into this....which will be soon, I hope. She surprised me by sending me this cutely wrapped piece of fabric she'd dyed along with notes from a workshop she attended on dying fabric. The picture following this one shows the piece of fabric opened up. Isn't it GORGEOUS? I just want to LOOK at it for awhile and will find it very hard (maybe even impossible) to cut this one up, ya know? Thanks, Lisa, for the fabric and for the "mentoring".

Some HAPPY photos......

After having a bad couple of days, I was determined yesterday to find some things that made me feel HAPPY and take photos of them. I am sharing them with you now and hope you enjoy them, too. (Hoping to get back on track today and be able to focus on my medical typing AND some sewing.) First is a group of flowers growing by the picket fence of an old, historical home in the town of Lewes ...right behind our church. I saw them when I got out of the car for church and they put a smile on my face and in my heart! (Should be able to click to enlarge, if you want.)
On the way home from church, this spectacular field of sunflowers was on display for us. Even with the gray skies we had today, it was thrilling to see this. Last year, I came upon this field when it was well past the "good photo" stage, so I was very happy to see these today....and I had MORE smiles after stopping with hubby and getting these photos.

Some photos of our tree damage.......

I am hoping to sleep tonight.......after not sleeping last night more than 3 hours. I realize the damage could have been a lot worse and we could have been hurt. I am very grateful to all of you for the caring comments and emails I got.....and I apologize for not having time amidst all the "activity" here today to reply to you. I think the reasons I am upset are that: the tree was on COMMON ground and should be the landowner's responsibility...not MINE (as it wasn't on MY lot).........there are 5 MORE trees that are just as scraggly and just as exposed to TOTAL wind (due to the recently totally cleared....basically, stripped...land behind us)....and the tree removal guy said in his professional opinion, we are sitting ducks for this to happen again with any of those other trees if the landowner won't take them down. (And those other trees are positioned so that they would really do more serious damage to the house.) SO....it's hard NOT to be upset and nearly impossible to go to sleep in a relaxed frame of mind!

Here are a few photos....as always, click to enlarge. This is a neighbor looking at one of the other trees that could easily topple onto our house. (There was total woods behind us when we bought....and the trees were thick enough that they provided a good break from the wind...now the area is TOTALLY devoid of trees except for these few pines near the fence...in sort of a line next to the one that came down). The tree landed ON the house but was about a foot ABOVE our cute little storage shed...and it was very tricky to get the tree down without any of it falling ON the shed and, probably, ruining the shed. These tree removal guys were very good at what they do! (But I had to shell out a check for $3,100......will get $2,100 of it back from insurance, supposedly.) It still was a hardship to write out a check of that size.
The peak of the roof is nearly flattened. At least today was sunny and rain-free for the tree removal work. The worst of the damage is over the master bathroom.....skylight has damage and there are roof rafters (beams) that are destroyed....so major work will be needed there. Some of the damage is over the master bedroom...but not much of it. We don't know if there was any damage to the foundation areaThis is an "aerial" view of the damage. Hubby was invited by the tree removal guy to go up in the bucket truck to get this angle for the insurance company. My stomach knotted up when I first saw the damage in daylight....it's hard to see your home look that way. It helped me to get online last night and read all your caring comments to me...had to laugh at Dawn's comment that even with this upsetting episode in my life, I didn't miss a blog post. I emailed her back and told her that blogging is what keeps me sane most days!!! Thanks to all of you...it did help me a lot to find so many messages last night.

UPSETTING night......tree crashed onto our roof....

Last night was quite upsetting. About dinnertime, storms were coming through the area. Our development cleared all the woods out from behind us last year to make room for new houses (which are NOT selling in this economy). They left a few raggy, good-for-nothing tall pine trees in place. Those trees give NO shade and are not nice-looking, but I guess they were too lazy to take them all. SO.......the end result is a wide open expanse of land with just a few trees to stop the wind....and then OUR house. One of them cracked (about 6 feet above ground level) when a big wind gust hit it and the tree slammed into the rear corner of our house. There is a substantial amount of damage to the corner of the house where the master bathroom is.

Tree people came out and worked until after dark to remove enough of the tree to tarp the roof...and they are due back this a.m. to finish the job. They will need to bring a crane as the tree is poised above our shed and will drop down ONTO the shed if they just cut it in sections as they would normally do. One of the most upsetting parts is that the tree is not on OUR lot, but since this is an "act of God", the landowner doesn't have to pay (at least in the state of Delaware). SO......we have to pay our deductible (seems like the landowner should at least pay THAT for us) and our insurance company needs to deal with this. The adjuster will be here on Monday morning. It doesn't seem fair....since it's not OUR tree on OUR lot....but that's how it is here. There is legislation pending to change that, but it's not passed yet....just our luck. We have a lot of photos, but I'm not going to show any as it's too upsetting for me right now. This is, I believe, the only post I've ever done here with no photo...but I'm sure you will all understand.