Thank you-that looks very much like it.

Yikes, maryl! You've had major problems with spider mites on marigolds there? That sucks. Spider mites are, of course, among the very worst and most frustrating pests we all battle in the summer in the mid-South. And they can show up on just about any kind of plant, but I've never had more than an occasional flare-up on marigolds here. From what I've seen of Oklahoma, though, that may be especially prime spider mite habitat, so maybe you guys have to deal with more of them in all of your blazing summer heat. Still, from what I've seen here in North Carolina, spider mites have been much more of an issue on lantanas than on marigolds. But your experience is interesting and valuable. And I had another thought for a suggestion for your situation as I was strolling through my garden earlier this evening: phlomis. There are a number of species and varieties of phlomis out there, with all sorts of different flower colors, but many of them are just the brightest, clearest, purest yellow imaginable. My favorite phlomis cultivarÂand the one I was looking at in my yard that inspired the thoughtÂis 'Edward Bowles,' although its flowers may be too far into that golden-yellow color that you said you don't want. There's another pretty variety that I used to grow at my last house but didn't bring with me which has awesome medium-yellow flowers that are more like what you're looking for. I can't recall the name of that cultivar for the life of me, though. I'll let you know if I think of it or if I find it in my notes. Regardless, phlomis are terrific plants, and they look good all year and are highly critter-resistant. And much to my surprise, I've found that they don't require full sun, and will actually grow and flower quite well in a spot that gets as little as three or four hours of sun a day in the summer. They don't get very tall, although they do tend to spread out rather wide over time. I find a substantial haircut right after flowering helps a lot. A major drawback for your purposes may be that they flower fairly early, usually peaking about now (April-May) here in North Carolina, although mine also sometimes produce a few stray blossoms later in the summer or fall. I think it would be worth considering. FWIW, donnabaskets, if you think of it this summer, would you mind updating us on how your 'Butterpat' heleniums do? I've always liked heleniums from a distance, but when I got some a few years ago (I don't remember the cultivar name of them, either, but they weren't 'Butterpat;' I think they had some German name, which may have been part of the problem), they got obliterated by powdery mildew by the middle of July, and I gave up on them. But if yours does well in steamy Mississippi, then it would certainly be worth me giving it another try. Best of luck to both of you!

If you visit the evening primrose about sundown you can watch the flowers open. Each flower opens for a single night, and the whole process takes only about 10 minutes. It is interesting to watch and kids love it.

I guess you'd have to be in my shoes to see the damage-yes, damage-done by this obsession with prairies as "the" native vegetation, all while forests continue to be converted to parking lots and car washes ad nauseum. It's well beyond the time I've got right now-I'm smack in the middle of doing data gathering for Wetland Mitigation Monitoring Reports for our DNR and the Army Corps of Engineers-in sites which are prairie plantings no less, to fully flesh this out. I've taken shots at it here and there on the various native-oriented forums here on GW. We're talking highly nuanced, but most people just want to receive a very simple message that if they cut down the blue spruce and plant some Rudbeckias in their yards, they've done great things for nature. I dare say, I think you'd be surprised if you knew the full extent of my personal and professional involvement in this area. And BTW, as vegetation manager for our many Stormwater utility sites and projects, I am directly involved in the installation and maintenance of prairie plantings.....not restorations...but which I do in fact view as little oases of habitat for those organisms which do best there. However, due to our location right in the middle of said tension zone, I've devoted considerable effort to educating my associates as to just exactly what vegetation communities are truly native here. We've therefore expanded the total plant palette we use at such sites. You'd be extremely hard-pressed to convince me this has not been an important and positive contribution. What has happened, again due to what I call the prairie lobby, is that because the basic methodology of prairie formation/maintenance is that these were pyric plant communities, now everyone thinks all the land around here burned every three years, or some equivalent bit of nonsense. In fact, the county I live in was originally covered by primarily northern hardwood forest, which indeed does burn sometimes, but research has shown the fire interval to be roughly 400 years! I decry the simple-minded way that so many avowed native enthusiasts view plant community management, due to the unwarranted intrusion of this kind of thinking into every corner of the discipline. Pyric plant communities are great, they did exist in this state, but they are far, far from the whole story. And this unwarranted simplification does a disservice to nature at large. I've literally been standing in the middle of one of our created prairies with one of the big guys, the acknowledged experts, in the field of native restoration, as they wondered if this strain of big bluestem, or that patch of switchgrass, was genetically appropriate for our locale,while during the whole time, an adjacent tract of forest was being torn down for more houses....with not a word or so much as a thought given to the utterly wanton destruction going on next door, so to speak. This rubs me the wrong way, to say the very least. +oM