We northerners get to live vicariously through posts like this! That Abe Darby is stunning!!! I had an AD; it overwintered, but just barely and then over the next 2 years it petered out. Yours is lovely!! Carol

Oxalis fabaefolia? Comes up twice in a year. Leaves first - no flowers. Then leaves and flowers in autumn.

I hope your wish comes true and these are the roses and not the rootstock, Beth. Water is certainly a miraculous thing, and maybe there are more surprises in store. When we enhanced our drip system by adding tiny sprinklers to the drip lines a few years ago, I had several perennials come up that I thought had died out years before. Also some rootstock that seemed to be long gone, too (not so good, but nothing disastrous either). Diane

I think it's wind, water and wildlife, the 3 W's, that spread seed of invasive plants. They spread good plants too, you just don't hear much complaining about those though! We lived in TN for awhile, near Chattanooga. The Mimosa tree, or Silk tree, is very invasive there. It lines the roadways. As does the Princess tree, Kudzu and the Bradford Pear. Christy, If Prunus serotina, the wild black cherry, or I'm guessing Celtis occidentalis, the hackberry, are indigenous to your area, then they'd never be considered invasive. Or if it's Morus rubra, the red mulberry and not Morus alba, the white mulberry, that's an indigenous plant too. If it's M. alba, that's invasive. Our indigenous (or native) flora don't out-compete with other indigenous plants, like invasive plants do. Sherry, I found a site for MS invasive plants here. Scroll down and you see Silk tree, Albizia julibrissin, listed. I'm not telling you to cut it down though! You said you can handle it and I believe you. I hear everyone on the Japanese honeysuckle, the multi-flora rose and whatever else is on my parents property that my hubby and I have been elected to cut down, brush (or is it bush?) hog, and get rid of. Painstakingly hard work. Here, I get the white mulberry and I also have gotten barberry. That dark reddish purple thorny shrub? Neighbors to our north, a block up, have it. It gets berries, and like you said Christy, they eat the berries, come here, sit on another shrub, and poop out a nice fertilized nugget that in turn becomes some alien plant I don't want! What am I gonna do though? Dig it up, that's all. I grumble...lol....I sure hope I don't sound preachy. That is NOT my intention at all! Has anyone heard of Ailanthus altissima? Tree of Heaven? When we bought this place, it was dead of winter. To my standards (jungle style.lol..), there was hardly any landscaping. There was this one big tree in the back corner. Hmmm....what is it? Spring comes, and it leaves out, then makes these seeds. Hundreds of thousands of seeds! Those things blew all over the place! What is this dang tree? Finally, a tree service just happened to be in the alley behind us. I run back there and ask them, what is this tree? "why, that's a tree of Heaven!" I know all of you heard a really loud NOOOO, where ever you live! That would have been me. LOL I called another tree service, the one that was in the alley was hired by the city, and had them come and cut down that thing. Much to my dismay, there's still a female in the empty lot behind us, a male 2 doors down, and countless seed that still resides just under the top layer of soil. Did you know the seed is viable for 50 yrs?? And the female back there is still producing....ey ey ey....