I noticed today that several of mine are in that stage today...I can cut them off and be done with it til next year (except that they will put out fresh foliage now in our climate.)

After my columbine are done blooming and the leaves start looking bad, I cut them down. After a week or so, new leaves come up. As long as I water them and don't let them dry out bad, they will grow all summer. I even get a few blooms the 2nd time around.
Good luck with yours.

Kat

Thank you both! I cut the flower stalk back after blooms were done (and I collected seeds!) and I started getting tons of leaves. Its just been recently some of the leaves have been dying back... I cut the flower stalk down further, my intentions for the plant to give more energy to the leaves and not worry about the stalk but that didn't help. I started panicking that cutting that stalk was a very very bad idea but it sounds like this is at least somewhat normal. Thanks for the help! Worse comes to worse I have plenty of seeds :)

I tend to dead head most of the seedheads on Columbine, except for a few stalks that I might want to collect seed. This seems to encourage subsequent foliage and root growth, and increase the likelihood that the plants will make it through the winter.

Sometimes plants can exhaust themselves making tons of seed.

Since this would be the time - some time ago even - that the columbine seeds were falling naturally from the dried pods, you might scatter some now where you want them. They need light to germinate, so you can press them in lightly but don't cover with soil.

I only have A. Canadensis which self seed everywhere, so I don't know much about the modern hybrids. Although I suspect the seeding techniques are the same. Any new seedlings take a season or two to be of blooming size.