Harlequin glorybower and an NSV

Isn’t that a wonderful name for a tree? I just love saying  it, ever since I identified the perfumey trees blooming at the foot of our drive. If the wind’s blowing toward you, the sweet smell of the honeysuckle-like pink and white flowers is almost overpowering, but what else do we have to smell in mid-August? And, at least a month before the purple asters take over, nothing else is blooming besides the last of the sunflowers and some rather timid zinnias.

If you look it up, every source emphasizes that the non-invasive native of China and Japan doesn’t look like much except when it’s blooming. And it doesn’t — the plain-Jane foliage and droopy limbs look rather blowsy standing down there at the mailbox. But, oh, when it flowers, not only is the air alive

with the smell, the flowers are covered, make that blanketed, in butterflies.

When we walk past, it looks like an entire tree might lift skyward as all the swallowtails  take off for a moment. Yellow and black wings vibrate on every square inch.

He Who Rides the Fields on a Tractor found these in a fencerow years ago, brought them home and stuck them in the ground. Not only have the originals thrived — they’ve multiplied. And, truth to tell, blowsy suits our landscaping with its shaggy forsythia, wisteria and mock orange.

Walking past the h.g.c.’s with Panda the Pushy Pit Bull dragging me down and back up North Meadow Road in another sailor-take-warning sunrise, I was thinking about “can’t” and “don’t”. As in I can’t eat that or I don’t. Can’t implies I’m helpless before something; don’t, that I have the discipline to simply not eat it. So I don’t eat much sugar anymore, and I feel better for it.

Last night, though, at the Prickly Pear “modern Mexican” restaurant in Mooresville, I chose to eat some, both in the mango cheesecake (not worth the calories, even for half a slice) and a regular-size margarita with cactus (so worth it!) But I didn’t fall lemming-like over the cliff — I got home and ate nothing else for the evening. So I can say I don’t eat too much. Yay, me! Another NSV (non-scale victory — a Weight Watchers term) like my waist “shrinking” to 39 inches. First time out of the 40s in a couple of decades! I think I can, I think I can.