Every year I have mixed feelings about these guys when the time rolls around for them to make their midsummer garden splash. Tall and showy, the plants are of such vigor that one is obliged through the earlier part of the season to keep hacking them back. Otherwise they would swamp the roses. But then eventually there is this explosion of blossom against dark foliage, and who would dare to say it is not attractive? It is attractive. Of course it is. But more so from a distance. Up close, the smell is unpleasant, even corpse-like. Flies are attracted, not bees.