I live in zone five and observed the same a few weeks ago. The short answer: cut everything back right now. Cut the Joe Pie Weed by half; it will bloom later and there will more flower clusters but smaller. If half frightens you cut back by 1/3 The phlox should have been thinned and pinched three weeks ago. take a third off, don't leave stubs, and thin out skinny overcrowded stems. The phlox will form two sprays of blossoms from each pinched terminal. They will bloom two weeks later and be a foot shorter and will less likely to flop and get mildew Same thing for flowers that send up multitude of stems: tall coreopsis, boltonia, asters. Clip them back by half and they'll be better. Not coneflowers or more 'single stemmed' plants. It takes too long for those blooms to form Not candlelabra types: veronica, veronicastrum, mulleins, digitalis, goldenrods....shapes are weird and ugly. My knowledge originally came from gardening books and experience. My courage to try other other plants came from the author of the Well Tended Garden: Tracey d...Sablio? Now go to Amazon and see if you can get for less than retail. But retail is better than not at all. Marie

If you like spiders and UFs, you really can't go wrong with Dan Bachman's or Margo Reed/ Jim Murphy's cultivars. They should be hardy in zones 5-6 . Here are a couple of other good lates here. ( I may have shown the first one before - if so, sorry.) Jim's OLFACTORY EVIDENCE - big yellow fragrant open formed flower - not a UF: And Margo Reed's EVEN STEPHEN - This one has amazing scapes and bud count: Although Sanford Robert's POINT OF VIEW is not registered as such, the consensus of many on the Email robin was that this blooms ML-L for them. It is one of about 5 clumps still in full bloom here: A picture really can't show what a nice clump POINT OF VIEW makes - big imposing blooms!

CTC- The Blue Salvia is INDIGO SPIRES which I plant each spring as it dies each winter here. But I just love INDIGO SPIRES. Nancy, these are all the newer mildew resistant types of phlox and I know I haven't seen any mildew on them yet. Casey, I did post FALL PINK MELLON clump shots before but it just keeps pumping out those blooms. I can't resist them. nat and kay, I don't have any white phlox but have lots of eyed ones. One is really pretty cream with a purple star eye. I do love the new phlox I got this year. Judy, the phlox just keeps blooming forever so I haven't cut it back yet. Celeste, just try to remember to check Olallies website in the spring before things get picked over. As the year progresses more and more daylilies are no longer listed as they sell out for the year. They do need some time to establish but once they are clump size they just bloom like crazy. Debra, the new phlox I think will really look good next year as I mail ordered them this spring and they weren't big plants. One was a local potted buy but of the mail ordered ones, two were potted so not too small. The other three were those bagged dried phlox roots you sometimes see. I had never bought those before and wasn't even sure they would grow at first but they did. Not much bloom but like I said, next year should be really good.

Thanks for the nice comments everyone. Eileen the Hoya with the pink nectar stained flowers is Hoya meliflua, I post the names up above the photos. I wanted to make sure you had the right name to go on your Hoya wish list. :) Cindy congratulations on the lasiantha blooms, awesome colour! David I am fascinated with the Shipibo and have the tapestry, pottery and a hand embroidered cloth as well. The Shipibo are the tribal group who utilize the psychoactive admixture called Ayahuasca. I also have some wonderful books filled with Pablo Amaringo's Ayahuasca paintings. Mike Here is a link that might be useful: Ayahuasca article by National Geographic