Lovely things

The Gala apple tree in the picture was planted in November of 2008, the year we moved to the pasture.  

It appears that I'm going to have blooms from this tree for the first time!  Of course, I don't know whether bees will be able to find a pollinator that will be a good match.  I read that technically, Galas are self-pollinating, but they produce more apples if there is another, different kind of tree around that blooms at the same time.  Once my Fuji starts blooming, next year I hope, I'll have my pollinator.  

By the way, all the trees I planted last November are alive and well.  

   Suzie the Cat, queen of the porch.  

This was a nice surprise:  The first summer we lived back here, I was ordering plants, bushes, and trees like crazy.  Somewhere along the way, a free lilac bush was included in my order.  It's going to bloom this year, unless we get a hard freeze.  I have a dwarf lilac bush in the front yard, but this is the old-fashioned lilac bush.

The tall phlox is up and growing.  I got my start from a neighbor, Marie Perrine, who is long gone now.  She was the great-grandmother of the twins that used to hang around here.  If any of my local friends would like a start of this, it's an easy plant to have around, and it has a pleasant fragrance.  In a year with normal rain, it will bloom for most of the summer.

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I got on the bathroom scale and weighed 160.0.  I reached my goal!  Tomorrow is our official weigh-in, but if I weigh even one ounce more tomorrow, I am going to write down today's weight!  
My daughter doesn't realize it, but she has inspired me to maintain my weight in the future.  It came from a conversation we had.  
Me:  "The trouble with the Atkins diet is that I've never seen anyone keep the weight off after they're done with it." 
Rachel:  "But have you seen ANYBODY who didn't gain it all back, on ANY kind of diet?"  
I take that as a challenge.  I'm intend to be the one to show the world you don't have to gain back the weight.  Of course, since I'm not on a "diet", it shouldn't be too hard.  Yes, I have said that before.  Just remember, failure isn't final.