So bought a house two years ago, and it had some shrubbery and a lot of hostas'. I grew up helping my grandmother garden here and there, but I never had one of my own, until now. Problem is, there are a few plants that I cannot for the life of me figure out what they are, my inexperience is not helping me (or the plants) and its kind of frustrating :/

The hostas are doing just fine.... I am very familiar with those as my grandmother always referred to them as her old faithfuls and a lazy gardeners best friend :)

So I have one that looks suspiciously like a sweet bay magnolia (another of my grandmother's favorites) but I am not really well versed in their care; and one that I think may be a Rhododendron of some sort, there were two but one was pretty badly decayed (white all over and laying almost parallel to the ground) that apparently the previous owner tried to extend it's life for "one more season" too many, by tying it up- isn; I removed that one to put it out of its misery.

I also started a small section of my own where the grass seemed to not want to grow, except now the poor sunflowers keep getting ants. I did do some reading on it and it seems fair to say that there are most likely aphids that I need to take care of.

Could someone please maybe throw some advice? I uploaded a picture of the one I think is the magnolia.