The Plant Formerly Known as Lemon Verbena

Well, today we got a couple of gardening "chores" taken care of.  Today Derrick very bravely cleared the area behind the greenhouse which looked too spider infested for me to go near.  Wearing his new multi-purpose gloves he threw the planks of wood from the old raised beds aside and used the trowel to smash egg sacs.  My arachnophobia has lessened substantially since I was a kid, but I was still scared enough that I watched with trepidation hiding around the corner by the wheelbarrow.  We are clearing this area to get what we think is a blackberry plant growing up the backside of the greenhouse.  Besides moving the miscellaneous wood and cinder blocks we will also need to level out the big mound of dirt left over from when there was a lettuce bed there.  I don't know what we'll do with the wood, but the dirt will be no problem.  Dirt can easily be recycled into pots after being mixed with nutrient rich mulch or compost.

 Getting the blackberry in the ground is one of the current backyard projects, as is clearing the area by the "blood orange".  We aren't really sure if the citrus tree in the back of the greenhouse is a blood orange or not, I'm only assuming so since I found blueprints my Dad drew of the backyard which included a blood orange in that exact spot.  Funny thing is, Derrick cut into it with his knife and it was completely orange on the inside.  However, it did taste kind of like a blood orange despite it being devoid of any trace of red whatsoever.  We read online that blood oranges sometimes start out orange and then get veins of red, which my Mom confirmed, so maybe it just hasn't ripened all the way yet or something.  Right next to the "blood orange" is a "lemon verbena".  This plant smells just like lemon soap or Pine Sol.  I'm reading Amy Stewart's book The Drunken Botantist and she has a section of lemon verbena.  When I saw this I flipped over to that page but was surprised by her description and illustration.  I began to doubt that what Stewart was talking about and the plant in my backyard were one in the same.  So I hopped on Google and searched lemon verbena.  Definitely not the same plant!  I had been calling this shrub-like thing lemon verbena practically since we moved in.  Derrick and had a couple we were friends with over to help us clean up the yard last summer and they told me it was lemon verbena.  I never questioned it, and when I told my mom she accepted that this was its right and proper name too.  After some internet sleuthing, I discovered that the plant in question was actually a lemon scented geranium.  Aha!  The Plant Formerly Know As Lemon Verbena I plan on transplanting into a pot because it is a little bit invasive.  The bees love it, and it would look nice when it gets its little pink flowers sitting on the potting bench.  I guess that the moral of the lemon geranium story is that I still have A LOT to learn before I can nonchalantly toss around nomenclature.  A similarly humbling experience happened when I had planted an extremely sparse and cut-back Kale out front next to the geraniums.  My mom was very confused when she saw that.  Needless to say we moved it into the veggie bed outback where it is quite comfortable.

Tomorrow after I get home from work I want to do more weeding by the blood orange so that we can hopefully get two things done.  First, I want to put the small trellis we found against the stephanotis and take the tomato cage which it is currently growing around off.  Hopefully with better support and no weeds around it to suck up the moisture the leaves will look less yellow and heartier.  Then, I want to see if we have enough edging to make a border around the blood orange and the Valencia.  This should be pretty easy and then at our next trip to Home Depot we can pick up some rock or barks to fill the area with to keep the weeds at bay.  Hopefully the weather tomorrow is just like it was today, overcast.  If it is gray outside again then we can actually get some work done (that is, if I'm not too much of a zombie from waking up early and going to a soul-sucking retail job).