As I have mentioned in some other posts, the local gardens are looking awfully bleak and colorless. I did manage to find some new growth and posted some photos of blooming snowdrop flowers yesterday morning. I had to search even harder, though, to find some small splashes of color in the midst of all of the brown, shriveled vegetation.
I found two plants that still had some color, though I have no idea what kind they are. One is pink and has some kind of berries and the other is red and has small spikey flowers on it.
The plants are modest and the colors muted, but they will help to tide me over as I await the return of the glorious colors of spring.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
The berries look like silky dogwood, but I’m not positive. The second shot is staghorn sumac fruit. There is actually a lot of color out there, but you have to look closely to find it!
Thanks for the help on identification. You’re definitely right about the color being there and I’m doing my best to find it and photograph it.
I know wildlife will eat the sumac seed heads, but I took one apart one time and couldn’t see much of nutritive value in it. Some berries are poisonous. I wonder if the dogwood is edible.
The dogwood is edible Sue, but I’ve heard the berries taste terrible. You can make a pretty good “lemonade” from the sumac berries, but the washing and soaking seems like a lot of work for a glass of lemonade.
I meant to add above–the shot of the presumed dogwood berries is beautiful, withe the magenta color against the tan background and stem slightly askew.
Thanks, Sue. I like the shot so much from an artistic perspective that I almost didn’t care about identifying it.
The first looks like it could be American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana:
http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=CAAM2