Labels for the photos of April 9: Photo 1 has 3 large shrubs, front to back: Fat Albert Blue Spruce, Coppertina ninebark, Shadbush of some type. Lower growing, back to front: Amsonia hubrichtii has the feathery leaves and very pale blue flowers; the bright pink flower on a low bush in front of the blue spruce is a rhododendron, I think Independence Day; The bright purple is a Salvia, but I don't remember the type, and the one sort of between the rhodie and the salvia is a Hellebore seedling. Photo 2 has two Rhododendron Olga Mezitt with a combination of green and bright red leaves, one on the far right in front of the dark green arborvitae Techny and one in front of the bright yellow spice bush. The yellow tinted arborvitae between the Rhodie Olga Mezitt is Sunkist. The red, yellow, green shrubby thin between the Sunkist arborvitae and the right side Rhodie is one of the same varieties in the first photos, Amsonia hubrichtii in all its fall glory. The blue-green low groundcover in front of the Sunkist arborvitae is Greystone dianthus AKA pinks (though it is white flowered) and the rambly out-of-control groundcover near the front left is Nepeta AKA catmint. There are a couple of the same Fat Albert blue spruces, one to the left of the yellow spicebush, and one just peaking out to the right of the Sunkist arborvitae. Here are some photos from earlier in the life of this bed when it was in its third growing season. I deliberately left lots of room for the shrubs to grow, so there is quite a bit of mulch showing. Since then I've also added a few plants here and there as I could shoehorn them in. From June 2010 This covers much of the same area as photo 2 above, and though the trellises shown here are still in the same place, they are not nearly as visible now as they were in 2010 when this photo was taken. The Techny and Sunkist arborvitae are smaller as are the Fat Albert blue spruce. The purple flowers are the Nepeta AKA catmint, and the white flowers are the Greystone dianthus AKA pinks. The feathery plant to the right and slightly behind Greystone is the Amsonia hubrichtii in its first season. To the right of that in front of the blue spruce and also in its first season is one of the Rhododendron Olga Mezitt. From June 2010 This is a close up including the blue spruce, Amsonia, and Coppertina ninebark (plus a tiny bit of the rhododendron's leaves at the bottom) from the first photo in my earlier post. And here is a photo looking down the bed to give an idea of how relatively sparse it was in its third season. From June 2010 I spent a bit more money than I often do on the evergreens to get reasonable sized plants, though I did buy them at the autumn sales in 2007, since I wanted medium-slow growing evergreens. Many of the rest of the plants have been added as quart pots, or in the case of the hydrangeas in this bed as, rooted cuttings in 4" pots. I knew that the hydrangeas, clematis and perennials would get larger faster than the evergreens so the smaller plants would catch up. Here's a photo (taken from a higher vantage point so things look a bit shorter than they are) of the whole bed from the end where photo 1 from April 9 was taken. This is one of the quietest times of year in this bed, after many of the spring and summer bloomers have stopped, but before the fall color erupts. There are still a couple of hydrangeas not very visible in this photo, some asters, colchicum bulbs blooming, and the white fluffy seedheads of clematis along with varied foliage texture and color.

Thanks Posy Pet. I think you might be on the right track. I've been looking up different kinds of locust trees and the flowers are similar. I'll check out the leaves next time I go by there. I can't recall how big the trees are but I don't think they're small like a dogwood. The flowers are pretty showy and light pink and the flower clusters are several inches long. I bet their tree is suckering also. That would explain why they have three so close together. Maybe I can take a picture. It's ok to stop in the middle of the road and take a picture of a tree right. lol

I still think it was you but don't remember that much if kids were there. Wife black straight hair? Last Saturday at the Devonian gardens we talked about prunus Siberica and thought it to be a rather minor deviation of prunus Manchirica. Even though Siberica is likely to carry over the pink I still have one reserved thought that Robert Purvis knows of about Siberica. That it is an incredibly slow grower and is dwarf. Robert used to live in Alaska and in Idaho still does nothing but apricot in one of his collections in Washington. Gabe Botar was at the gardens who is another person knowing a great deal about apricot. He had scions of a prolific dwarf apricot with small good tasting fruits that he produced from crossed parents. Good stuff because slow growing and dwarf is always great for extreme cold or unprotected sites. For example flowering under the snow would delay bloom and escape the damaging spring frosts. If Clair Lammers (formerly from Edmonton) from Alaska ever grew Gabes apricot he would at least had fruits from this where all other his Manchurica experiments failed. My grandfather may have been around as a retired forester at the time those were planted and lived very close by. Only a remote possibility exists. I came across the trees a few years ago because I wanted to visit my childhood memories of the wading pool that still there in that place and not that anybody told me. Who ever planted them it seems very possible it was done from self pollinated Goldcot seeds similar the way you collected from the pink tree the seeds for another generation.

Pink locusts are told apart from one another by fine details. Due to a lack of adequately specific information in the literature unlabeled examples of forms of horticultural origin can often be effectively impossible to name with certainty when encountered. A bunch of different species of locusts have been collected in AZ and NM. http://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/taxa/index.php?taxon=robinia&formsubmit=Search+Terms