lycopus Thank you for ID, and the willow with gall too. Greatly appreciated. Rina

Thanks, Marie. I can't get out much now, but I can search the web. This was a matter of exigency because I don't stake unless there is no other way. I have a bunch of hoop stakes but didn't want to use them on this. I don't have anything natural that is strong enough to hold anything but small plants that don't need to be staked. I also have a green heavy nylon twine, but I didn't want it to cut into the stems and bruise them. I've got regular old twine. If I hadn't been using the rebar I have, I would use that because it wouldn't show as much. Over on the antique rose forum, we use a lot of rebar. The roses soon hide it, and I asked my son to pick me up two 5' sections so I can tie a huge rose back (use my dk nylon loosely for that) so it doesn't hang over the sidewalk. I love bamboo, and you can buy long sections here, but it's expensive if you want a lot. I wanted to use raffia and make things for the garden with it. What I really want to do is make some small fence or trellis out of some of my white birch branches I've been saving, but I don't have a good plan in my head. That twig furniture, maybe somebody on Freecycle would give me some branches for more aesthetic staking that I can tie with raffia. I have some of my own books about that but nothing about stakes in particular. I'll check around the web. Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm still cutting it back after it blooms and think it will still lean. I'll look for some of the things you mentioned. It looks awful, I know that, but landscape tape is gentle. I could have tied it in smaller sections, but wanted it done and over with. I'm more concerned about saving the blooms than how it looks I'll split the part near the sidewalk off, and get more plants out of it and put that somewhere else or give it away. It just spread too much closer to the sidewalk and it's supposed to be at the back of the border. The gypsophilia probably won't come back next year. At this point, I'm more concerned with how to pinch out those plants right so maybe I won't have to stake them. I do know when and how to pinch back my phlox. Heck I could have used a couple tomato cages further back, then try to less obtrusively tie the ones in front to that, a few in a bunch. Never thought of it.

Now that we can see the actual plant, I agree with Euphorbia cotinifolia. The flowers on the euphorb are completely different from that of the smokebush but otherwise they do look similar. so easy to mistake if you are just looking at photos. In fact, the species name of the euphorbia means having leaves that look like cotinus so confusion is rife if not seeing the actual plant :-)

Yes, I looked and saw a couple of buds. Maybe the mystery will be solved soon. I have been waiting for months. I will check out to see what a ragweed is.