Trees, Shrubs and Conifers: Bee on Sourwood flowers, 2 by Pistil

Pistil wrote:
I am happy about the fall wine-red color of my little garbage can trees. I wanted a small deciduous tree with fall color, not a widely spreading tree. Sourwood reportedly grow slowly here and do not reach maximal height.
Sequoia- somewhere here there are some threads about my little trees. They are on all kinds of lists of 'recommended trees' for Seattle, but hardly anyone actually has one, and hardly anyone sells them! I have now figured out why-they are the devil to get going here. I recalled the intense fall color from youthful backpacking trips in the east, and Seattle is mostly evergreens (changing rapidly as so many folks have planted colorful trees in the last 30 years).
Anyway, my trials and tribulations are in those other threads. My two strange sideways trees are growing better now, possibly thanks to some unknown symbiont. I traded a DGer in Alabama some hybrid iris for a box of fresh soil from under an established sourwood last year!) One of my trees has a branch that released itself from the sideways plagiotropic growth that had been established because the nursery owner had propagated the trees from cuttings. That branch has made strong growth this year and I will make it the leader. Meanwhile I bought seeds and sprouted my own babies last year (used some of the Alabama soil), and I have little ones in the yard too. They look fine and happy. I will post photos of fall color in a month or so, they are just beginning to turn. Sourwood seeds are easy, you can sprout them in the spring, or use 'wintersowing' and just let them come up in the spring when they are ready, both worked for me. I don't know if the symbiont thing is real or not, my better growth this year could just be that they were finally established.
Here are photos from today. I like the late summer flowers.