It's a point of honor that, while I much prefer white or blue or burgundy or red or yellow or orange to pink, I nonetheless must have a pair of kick-ass Pink Borders just to prove that, yeah, I can still do it fabulously even though I don't particularly want to. One reason I get exasperated with the World of Pink is that there's not that much of it (at least compared to white or yellow). You need to look under every rock, to accept and even celebrate whatever scrap of pink you can find.
OK. I'm up for it. I signed on for the mission, and damn it I'm going to get to the goal.
And besides, then I have that much more opportunity to look under every rock, to find and then grow oddball stuff that I might otherwise not.
Like this surprising elderberry, Sambucus ebulus.
Unlike every other member of this shrubby tribe, it's a perennial. The pinnate leaves and flat heads of white flowers are the dead give-away: We're in Elderberry Country here. Plus the flat heads of dark blue berries that (I hear) they mature to. So far, my colony seems uninterested in fruiting. What put this perennial sambucus into my Pink Borders, though, is the pollen. It's pink.
Click on this marvelous Wiki-picture for a close look. Click again to get eyeball-to-pink-pollen. Pink-eyed, as it were.
And to think, it I hadn't gritted my teeth and committed to the Pink Borders, I wouldn't have ever known about pink pollen. Whew. Glad I was open to the experience.