First post and garden

So I did some gardening today. Figured I would post some pictures.

The planter originally had some weird plants in it. No idea what it's called but I call it the "cat shit plant" because it's roots look like cat shit. It's some sort of tuber ornamental and it's damn difficult to get rid of.

Start of summer I coated the whole thing in thick black plastic and let it bake in the sun. That seems to have helped. So yesterday and today I went ahead and ripped it all out and put the new plants in. Along with some actual weed barrier cloth. Hopefully that will help. The rocks where what I had laying around the backyard already so I just added them to keep the barrier down and make it look nice.

So I have a Rose in the middle a citronella geranium and on the other side of that a late x-mas present. A "Christian Dior" hybrid rose. Hopefully everything takes and it looks as good as it does in my head. I have been wanting to get a citronella geranium under my window for sometime now. In the summer these little gnats like to come in through my screen and wake me up with their buzzing. Hopefully this will help! If not at least it's nice to look at and smell.

 In the whiskey barrel pot I have a butterfly bush that I had in a smaller pot on the front porch but I moved it to the larger one in the back so hopefully it will get enough sun and room to grow. Eventually it may go into the ground as well haven't decided yet.

 

 This is some orange honeysuckle. I am not 100% sure if it means that the flowers are orange or it smells like orange. Either way it was a gift to my roommate and was getting really badly root bound so I put it next to the porch and hope I can get it to grow along the awning and look nice. Will have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't die. Shouldn't now that it has more room to grow and it has a lot of new leaf buds.

 That is one of the stray cats that we have around our property. We call her "Little One" or "Little Mama" as she had a litter of kittens in our backyard. Sadly only one survived and he became my cat. Will post pictures of him later.

That's a money tree that was here when we moved in. Not much to say except that it's a trooper. It's lost all of it's leaves when it gets way to hot or way to cold but always comes back. Nice little ornamental. You can see the bush behind it that I am starting to take out. Along with the oleander. I dislike both of those bushes but with limited space in trashcans I can only take out a little bit at a time. And I have to make sure to get replacements that I want. The oleander covers the wall to roommate's bedroom so in the summer it helps keep some of the heat off the wall. I was thinking of replacing it with either a couple elderberry bushes or maybe some jasmine.

 And my current pride and joy. This is my Apple tree. It's less then a year old. Well I mean it's older then that but I've had it for less then a year. It's put off some new growth not a whole lot but I hope that changes come spring and summer when it starts growing again. It's only suppose to get about 10ish feet high so it will be perfect to keep within the confines of the backyard. Already had to fight off an aphid infestation on it. I always have trouble with those.

Well that's about it for this post I suppose. Will post more pics as I get things settled. Once I can bend the backyard to my will it should prove to be a nice place to sit in the evenings.