You may be a little disappointed in the off-the-vine flavor of your Triple Crown blackberries, as from my experience having grown them and other trailing thornless types, they arent very sweet per se. You have to pick them at just the right time in order to get any sweetness, and if they appear fully dark colored, but still slightly hard, they may not be ready yet. So you cant necessarily always go by the color of the berries alone. You have to wait til they have turned dark purple and the individual berries have swollen somewhat before they are fully ripe. Even then they wont be as sweet as a black raspberry for instance.

Mine has looked like this since mid July here in central Oklahoma. Not much Pow Wow for the buck in our hot summers. Like I said, its thirsty and doesn't seem to like the heat down here. It punks out early, did the same thing last year but yes, it survives winter. I'm sticking with the unimproved types, no molly coddling here even though I have taken pity on it and watered it every week since I have a salvia close by I'm trying to get established. Otherwise, even the foliage would be toast. Since we are asking how'd they do.....I give it a low rating. To be fair, I have just about come to the conclusion that your summer further north is like our spring. These don't do summer here, down here I consider it a spring bloomer.

this type of rose ... mostly blooms once a season ... with a minor show.. and is otherwise an ugly and unruly plant... imho ... if you want a nice reblooming rose ... buy one.. it will be worth it ... ken

Yeah, the photo is of the Sugar Shack buttonbrush. Cornus kousa is pretty common here as a yard tree but they may have seen another dogwood. They said it was a thin stemmed bush and that they don't remember the leaves being as shiny as the ones in the photo. I've checked online Chinese literature and found nothing that adds up. Thanks