Mental Hiccups

When I was a little kid, I was a dreamy, forgetful, out-of-touch little soul. Things haven't changed much.

I have spent the last two days believing that today, a Wednesday, was the third Wednesday of the month, and was, therefore, a Sew & Sews group day. Alas! There are five Wednesdays to this August, and this is the FOURTH one, not the third one.

The car was all happily loaded with my stuff for my sewing group. I made a "traveler" cup of tea for the ride up to Laconia, New Hampshire. Heck, I even remembered to make Matthew two honeyed ham and smoked gouda sandwiches to be the lunch that he hadn't time to make this morning. I dropped them off at the dump, oops, Recycling Center, where he works. I got all the way into the building at Woodside and wondered why no one was there and the lights were off. There was a calendar on the wall staring at me accusingly and screaming how stupid I was! Sigh.

There was nothing to do but to go buy gasoline for the car ($3.64 per gallon) and stop at The Quilted Frog for retail therapy.
Here is what I bought:

These are 5 half yard pieces in earthy olivey blues, burgundy and a creamy neutral with precious little owls. They really go nicely with the buck-a-pop Fat Quarters that I bought earlier this year at The Quilt PatchNH.com in Bedford, New Hampshire. I'm kind of a sissy when it comes to using blues, but these appealed to me.
When I got home, had some lunch and a rest, Felix and I decided to take our trusty old loppers and hand clippers to the dreaded web-worms that have been attacking some of our prized trees. Here is our little pear tree in the "BEFORE" photo.

Those hazy grayish areas are webs filled with horrid worms, well, really caterpillars, that eat so much that they will quickly denude and kill the baby tree. We had waited until the day's light was waning as that is when the worms go back into the web for the nighttime. Then we pruned the diseased wood carefully, placing each piece into a contractor's trash bag to go immediately to the dump transfer where it will be taken to Concord and burned. Ugh!
Here is the tree after pruning:

You can see that all the right side branches are now gone and there are not any gauzey webs on the little tree. This tree survived a very sudden and violent windstorm the year after we planted it. A gust snapped the tree off right above its graft and we did not think that it would survive. But, grow it did! Felix has trained a new leader from the offshoot which you can see is rather curved by necessity. So we now hope to save it from the webworms. I told Felix that we should name this tree, "The Calamity Jane Pear Tree." LOL!

Finally, I sewed a few calico catnip mice just for fun!