I'll bow to laceyvail's greater knowledge, but having spent 30 some years in Maryland where dogwood did (pre blight)/does abound, it does have the potential to reach some size. On our wooded lot, in the forest-like setting, the native dogwood tended to have tall slender trunks with a lacey canopy. However, a lovely one in the open on the front lawn was a sizeable tree, both height and width-wise. I'm just saying the potential for some growth is there and the OP's is planted close to the foundation. Daylilies (hemerocallis) are different from lilies (lilium) and without putting your nose right in the throat of a daylily - like Stella d'Oro which is yellow flowered - you'd get no hint of a scent. Some other groundcovers to consider: Phlox subulata (moss phlox) Moss pink, moss phlox or creeping phlox is a pretty common rock garden plant, but it also makes a good ground cover on poor, bare soils. It does do better when not competing with other things, though. It'll form a dense mat of foliage, which is covered in spring with masses of flowers in pink, purple, or white. Mine will often get a light reblooming throughout the summer and into the fall. Sedum (Stonecrop). Many different kinds ranging from tiny mats only a few inches high to plants 2 feet tall. They're used as ground covers, in rock gardens, on slopes, between stepping stones, etc. Most sedums are spreading or creeping plants that will root from broken branches or fallen leaves. Very easy, undemanding plants. From "How Stuff Works" - How to grow leadwort: Plant in well-drained soil that is rich in organic matter. Leadwort likes full sun or part shade. It will rot if the soil stays too wet, especially in winter. In most of growing Zones 5 and 6 plants die to the ground in winter. Apply a light winter mulch, and wait until growth resumes in mid-spring to cut stems back to the ground. Plant only in the spring: Leadwort needs a full growing season to get roots established. Uses for leadwort: Plant as a ground cover under shrubs and small trees and interplant spring-blooming bulbs such as crocus and daffodils." Late to come up means literally that - other plants may be well up before a "late" breaks ground in the spring. I experience that with platycodon which is the last to break ground here. Having gardened a long time, I know where the patches of it are so I know not to dig or plant over them. It's always good to put a marker over late breakers to alert you. And most information on any kind of plants will show you pictures of them at their peak of magnificence -rarely their fall die-back or spring emergence looks. You're kind of left to figure that out on your own. It's all fun and it's all a learning process no matter how long you've been at it. Despite any degree of gardening expertise, no one's immune from unintended consequences - something that just doesn't look right, failure to thrive or survive a winter even though it's supposed to, doesn't make the neighbors stop dead in their tracks. A good local garden center can be a wealth of information.

Kendra has a good idea about cutting off the vine at ground level. The vine will eventually turn brown and die off (but still potent). It will regrow from the root, and when it is still small, paint (or dip) the leaves with herbicide, then cover the new growth with an upside-down clay flower pot, and place a big rock over the opening. That will prevent contact with wildlife. You might have to treat the new growth more than once, and if the roots are traveling, watch for other sprouts. If you have to use a spray, first contain the plant within a space, like inside an upsidedown flower pot, plastic bag, or such, to prevent overspray.

Scott, That is interesting, so do you think you were getting a cross-pollinated plant that was a cross of corn and Johnson grass? For several years I grew corn in a 'corn cage', which is just a fenced plot with a woven wire fencing 'roof' on top so that I could totally exclude raccoons from the corn. It works great. Well, except that I had it along our south property line, across the driveway from the main garden, and Johnson grass from the property next door kept growing under the fence and popping up in my corn cage. When the plants are young and small, it can be challenging to tell the corn from the Johnson grass, though as they get larger, it is easier to tell. I spent a lot of time over several years digging out the Johnson grass, but finally gave up on growing corn that close to the uncontrolled Johnson grass next door. I didn't plant anything in the corn cage last year, and this winter I'm going to take down the corn cage fencing and move it elsewhere so that maybe I can grow corn without Johnson grass mixing in with it. Here were we live with heavy, dense woodland on three sides of us, coons in summer in the corn patch are about as common as the Johnson grass itself and I cannot harvest any corn at all unless I protect it from the coons with a corn cage. It is annoying, but we have to deal with the terrain and wildlife we have, so a corn cage likely will always be a part of my gardening effort here. Johnson grass is everywhere here in our area---growing in every bar ditch, along every fence row, in every field of nature pastureland and along the side of every rural road, so I don't see myself ever really getting rid of it because no matter what you do, it is growing right at the property lines all around you and, not respecting fences, creeping and crawling into areas where you thought you'd eradicated it. Mowing keeps it down, but the minute you stop mowing it, or it is too wet to mow for a while, you've got Johnson grass everywhere again. I'm just happy if I can more or less keep it out of the actual fenced garden. When I've dug it out by hand, I've found rhizomes bigger around than a human thumb and they often run for yards and yards through dense clay. I have found them even 12-15" below ground in my effort to dig deeply and find them all. And, I'm not finding and removing them all, but I do the best I can. Even when I dig as deeply as I can and remove every piece of rhizome I find, I still get new Johnson grass regrowth within a few weeks. Most people here around me just rototill their gardens once or twice before spring planting time arrives, thereby chopping up each big piece of Johnson grass rhizome into a million small pieces, and new grass grows from each small piece. Then, they plant, and (usually by May) new Johnson grass grows up along with whatever they planted and, in fact, the Johnson grass outgrows what they planted. Most folks (not gardening maniacs like me) just let the Johnson grass grow in their garden and eventually abandon the garden and let the Johnson grass take over. It happens every year. After a few years of that, they decide it is impossible to garden here with the Johnson grass and they stop. I refuse to let the Johnson grass win. It may grow right up to my garden fenceline every year, but I do my best to keep it out of the garden, even if it means looks of digging. The people here who do manage to keep it out of their gardens are diehard gardeners who dig it out, plow it up, cut it down, etc., whatever it takes on a weekly basis to at least keep the Johnson grass shorter than the corn and tomato plants. I put down heavy-duty commercial-grade landscape fabric in my garden pathways with mulch on top of it so at least I don't have to fight the Johnson grass and other grasses in the pathways, and it works pretty well, but those Johnson grass roots will run 20-30' underneath the landscape fabric and then pop up right where the landscape fabric ends. It is hard to defeat a type of grass that is that determined to grow, so the battle never ends. Johnny, All that works for me is digging it out, but that is not practical for you. (It really isn't practical for me since digging in the unimproved clay along the fenceline is really tough and time-consuming but I still try to do it when I can.) I think that plowing deeply will work well, but you'll never get rid of it all. Those rhizomes and roots are just too persistent. I don't know if there even is a herbicide that still kills Johnson grass (and I wouldn't use one anyway). Most Johnson grass has become herbicide-resistant. I see people here spray herbicides along their fence lines and it knocks back all the grasses and weeds temporarily, but the Johnson grass still comes back within just a few weeks, so all they are doing is killing back the growth above-ground, and then the rhizomes put out new shoots very soon thereafter. Even if they spray monthly, they aren't actually killing the plants because as soon as they stop spraying, they have just as much Johnson grass as they had in the first place. I've been told that if you mow the Johnson grass weekly without fail, you'll eventually weaken the plants enough below-ground that they die. The theory is that by never allowing the topgrowth to get big, there won't be enough energy going into the roots and rhizomes to survive indefinitely. Ha! We've been mowing our property regularly since 1999 and if we go about 3 weeks without mowing the bar ditches and fields, we have Johnson grass everywhere. If all those years of regular mowing haven't eradicated it by now, they aren't going to, are they? So, you know, regular mowing and plowing doesn't eradicate it, it just knocks it back for as long as you're mowing and plowing. Go a few months without mowing or plowing the Johnson grass, and you get a stand of it that is head-high in a remarkably short period of time. The drought of 2011, when most of our area went about 60-70 days with virtually no rain at all, did see a lot of the Johnson grass appear to die. It withered, wilted, turned brown and seemed dead......and everyone rejoiced, thinking that maybe one good thing would come from the drought. Nope. When the rain returned in late August, the Johnson grass was about the first thing (along with bermuda grass) to rebound. Dawn

@texasranger2, The place where the mosquitoes are the worst there none of that is present for the parts that we control but it borders three to four other properties that we have no control over. The biggest problem was that the mosquitoes were attacking the indoor dogs, one in particular, when they were outside. We started doing things to treat/repel the mosquitoes from the dog and this is going to be an additional measure. It did cross my mind about only being able to control our side of the fence/property but I hoped the plants would serve as a barrier/deterrent, which may be reasonable but one of the properties does have a lot of overgrowth and the odds are fairly high that there is standing water off our property but near where the dogs roam, so as I write this it is becoming clearer that the parts I have no control over are more of an issue than I initially thought. @ken_adrian, Interesting point about them knowing what to avoid because I have foxglove seeds and was very disappointed when I read that they are toxic. I have a few large/tall containers and am considering adding the foxglove as a companion plant but I am still looking into if and how much that will mitigate the risk. @mattp321, I will look into those two plants. @floral_uk , They are car tires. They are now covered in leaves so you really can't see what's in them. If necessary I will remove excess catnip, mint, and oregano to make space. You may be right that I will have to make the repellent. When I read about the repellent properties of catnip, I read that it was better than citronella and assumed that all that was needed was the plant but I don't know now, maybe even with citronella you have to actually use parts of the plant to make repellent.