I think the first one is a false spirea. My MIL gave me some years ago. It spreads by underground runners and you just have to pull them to keep it from going everywhere. It does not reseed. There will be white flowers on the top similar to astilbe later in the season.

The second looks like a cornflower(perennial batchlor button)(centaurea, montana).

Brenda

The first looks like Goatsbeard. The second does look like a Rudbeckia, but wow if it comes back that big!

The first one looks like a spirea plant that I had years ago.
The second one is a blue cornflower. I have one that seeds all over the place. So make sure you dead head it. Is it in full sun? If not it will get floppy, so putting a peony ring around it before it gets too big.
They are both nice looking plants.

Shelley

Thanks guys! I didn't even think of centaurea but I think that's it. Shelley, it's in almost full sun, there's a spruce tree that goes across for an hour at noon but otherwise sun all day. I will stake it up anyway. Gosh you can sure see in that pic how sandy my soil is after this morning's rain...

The first pic, I'm almost sure is false spirea as Brenda says. It looks like it has been spreading a bit and the stems are tough and woody. I don't care what it does there, it's just that and Solomon's Seal under the spruce tree and I'm hoping it covers the unsightly furnace vent.

Gillian, if you don't have a free peony cage what about using a tomato cage for your centaurea?

The false spirea will grow in sun or shade. MIL had hers in sun and mine is under a maple tree. It took 'forever' to get established under there...which was a good thing. In our yard it is used as one of the center plants in the west flowerbed under the second maple tree.

You mentioned that it is under a spruce tree. Is yours a mature tree? I have one spruce tree in my landscaping beds and it took hours for me to pick up all the pinecones from the beds around it this spring. Every year it is getting larger and producing more pinecones. But this year I also had to pick up all the branches that the magpies had brought to the tree when they were attempting to build a nest there last year. The branches had fallen to the ground during the winter. Thank goodness the few shots through the nest scared them off last spring and they did not complete making the nest. Has anyone seen how big a magpie nest can get? Enormous!! Plus, I wouldn't have any of the little birds around in my yard. And to hear a magpie in the morning wake me up...no thanks!

Brenda

Brenda - its the closest one in this pic... you say mature, I say enormous... LOL. The false spirea gets a little morning sun but mostly light shade. The pine needles and cones in my yard are no joke, they fill the eavestroughs twice a year >:0( This pic was from September and everything was raggedy or lost its leaves already.
{{gwi:693785}}

I wouldn't want a magpie nest either!

Ah, I should have recognized those two - I dig out enough runners of false spirea every year, and have been working for 7 years at trying to get Centaurea out of my flowerbeds (they'll seed out easily, Gillian, so if you don't want to be inundated, deadhead).