Thanks! My cemetery style plantings are the result of making use of opportunities to acquire trees and shrubs with no predetermined plan. :-) But I think I'm achieving what I want overall even though it caused me to move a couple of the plantings. Thanks for the pruning advice. The bloom looked more developed a couple days before I dug it out. It's hard to plan with so few large trees to work with. I located the Annabelle out away from the house because if I would've put it in the river rock border in the front, that generally only gets a few hours of early morning then a few before sunset and I wanted to make sure it had enough sun to bloom profusely. Our hot season is short up here and hot spells along with hot nights are not frequent. I don't mind watering as it's part of living where the soil is sand with silt and a few percent of clay in various areas. It's just a 'yard size' by most standards. Here is where the Annabelle is located east side of the driveway. The trees are on the North side so even when the increase in size there should still be sun albeit they will give morning and afternoon shadows someday. The summer sun rises above the maroon house in the upper left side of the picture. Almost directly in the northeast.

It looks like one of many things, but my gut feeling is that it's Pegler's Aloe. But distichous and blue and small is tough to ID at this point. ETA-you'll pardon me for saying so, especially if the rest of your Aloes are fine and dandy, but that rich looks kind of rich for a young plant (or an older one, for that matter). Was it just watered? I really hate losing any Aloe, and an A. peglerae is almost the worst (thankfully, fairly easy to replace), since it's such a pretty aloe. Pic courtesy of Ernesto Sandoval. And here are several in habitat - thanks for the photo by Riaan L.

Weigela was my first though as well........and there are a number of cultivars with gold foliage and red flowers. However it is too indistinct and distant to confirm that ID.

It might show as present in this area - BUT I’ve never seen it around here and it has never been in the nearby ‘forest’ wild area where DH goes birding a lot, especially in migration seasons. But if it’s here now, I’ve go to deal with it - and I’m not sure how to separate it out of the mass of other, desirable clematises there.... We will be cutting them all down this week to try to at least keep it from seeding around. Any other suggestions?