Once nap time was over we were able to get to work on my real goal for the weekend, which was to start to clear out the pine bushes from the yard, particularly the front.  As you may know, I’ve had my eye on that bush from the very beginning, and this weekend it’s time had finally come.  I want to get the front ready so that come spring I can just go out there and plant, and I am not trying to dig up bushes and rocks in the cold and half-frozen ground.

Thor set about sawizawing the giant bush down while I started picking up the white rocks.  Yes, those white landscaping rocks were basically covering the entire front planting bed underneath the bush.  I am cursed, they seem to follow me everywhere.  I spent about 2 years getting rid of them from the Rice Street house, and now they have found me again.  There is no easy way to scoop them up, they are everywhere, make it hard to dig, and most importantly they are so very very ugly.  If anyone wants some, however, just send us an e-mail.  I have about 8 buckets for you.  Thor is annoyed because it has just created more trash for us to start trying to get rid of.  In the end I created a make-shift sieve using a doormat hung across two buckets to try and shovel out the rocks from the dirt.  It did a pretty good job, but was also more time consuming.  Once it started to get dark out I just gave up, and there is definitely at least 3 buckets worth left in the planting bed still.

In addition to giving us more wood brush to try and get rid of and the dreaded white rocks, we have also discovered a wealth of flagstone.  We had found several pieces of flagstone and slate previously in the back yard and were already contemplating making our back patio out of flag stone with it, modeled a la Janis and Randy’s back patio at The Grange.  The problem was that we were lacking materials.  This was a problem no longer.  As we dug up more and more flag stone pieces (they must have been the foundation for a small retaining wall at some time) Thor suddenly became more and more excited about this whole project.

He has now laid out a nice looking patio area for us in the back.  I am thinking of taking some concrete and some of the white rocks and making a few mosaics to stick in there so they will at least have some redeeming value, and splitting up the slate to make patterns as well.

Thor had moved on to trying to tear out the pine bushes in the back yard while I continued rock mining up front, when he came over to show me where he had been attacked by bees.  Apparently one of the trees also houses a bee hive, and when he started cutting it down they went on the attack.  He was stung twice on the ear and once on his side.  Ouch.  I think we’re going to wait until the winter to cut that one down when the bees are all inactive or dead.  The welts started to swell up, and about 10 minutes later while we were hunting for the cat who was hiding from us under the neighbor’s porch, Thor looks over at me and says “I think I’m going into anaphalactic shock.”

What!  I look at him, and his face has just turned bright, bright, red.  Something is definitely wrong.  I ask him if he is still breathing okay and if his throat was starting to swell up, and he said no, although his chest felt tight.  He has never had a reaction to bees in the past, but has also never been stung 3 times before.  I sat him down in the back yard and told him to hollar at the neighbors (who had been watching this whole thing – cutting the tree, getting stung, and chasing the cat) if he started to have a hard time breathing while I ran (literally ran) to the drug store for some Benadryl.

5 minutes later I was back and he was sitting in a chair talking to the neighbors looking pretty miserable.  The benadryl worked pretty quickly, but that was definitely the end of our work for the day.  I knew the benadryl would have him on his ass pretty quickly, so we cleaned up and ate dinner and called it a day.  Thor was sleeping an hour later at 8pm.

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After the pine bush is gone, I think that we are going to kill all the grass over the winter and turn the entire front yard into a planting bed.  The yard itself is only about 20 x 7, so half of it is take up by the current planting bed anyway, and I don’t see any point in lugging the lawn mower up front to mow two strips of grass.

So one of the main problems with planting in the front is that it shaded all the time.

There are two large trees in front of the house that block out all hope of light.  This doesn’t help grass growth anyway, so this only reinforces the idea of clearing it all out.    Although I like hostas, I want to plant something other than just hostas in the front.  The main challenge with a shade garden seems to be finding something that blooms or has color.  Since there are not a lot of these plants, another important thing to play with will be texture.  Another point of caution seems to be that many of the plants I like are also poisonous, and in a kid friendly town like Oak Park where you are 6 feet away from your neighbors, this is definitely a no-no.

I am always on the look out for nice native plants, but being a prairie state, Illinois doesn’t have a ton of good ones for the shade.  Some plants that I am thinking about that should work well for our hardiness zone and heat tolerance are:

10 ft. tall, 5 to 8 ft. wide. strawberry-like fragrance to maroon flowers

14 in. tall, 12 in. wide, clumping growth

Tufted mounds 12 in. tall, 12 to 18 in. wide.

16 to 18in. Add to borders and containers.

Fast growth to 4 ft tall and 3 feet wide.

Popular ground covers for shady areas.

Moderate growing to 2 ft. tall, flower spikes 5 ft. tall.

Bright green leaves hold through fall. Perfect for borders

6 ft. tall, leaves take on vibrant beet-red fall color.

Clump forming plant with foliage to 2 ft. tall

Fast growing to about 22 in. tall, 18 in. wide.

A few types of hostas