I remember seeing an exciting new bird the second summer after moving here. It was an Indigo Bunting, and the all-blue plumage on a blackbird sized bird in the back of the yard was quite the sight in my young garden. Surely this was a sign that all kinds of wonderful new things would be showing up as the garden grew and developed, and not just people but also wildlife would appreciate my masterpiece. I rushed inside and grabbed my bird book (this would be 15 years ago when books and paper and such were still a thing), and when I found the entry for my new friend it was the phrase “of waste places” which really stood out. Waste places! It’s a good thing that wasn’t the day I named the gardens or this blog, because I’d probably reconsider or regret it some days, but it was a good reality check on my gardening ambitions.
The rains have returned and the lawn is again in need of mowing, but the borders are still sparse owing to the dry May and the resulting lack of self-sown treasures or motivated planting.
In the between years the garden has filled in more but I have yet to see a second bunting, and that’s a relief as far as creating a ‘waste place’, but somewhat sad since Indigo Buntings are quite cool. In hindsight when it happened they had just recently bulldozed down the woodland and shalebanks behind us for the industrial park, and I suspect the acres of weedy and seedy re-growth had more to do with luring in new birds, but to this day I sometimes look around and think ‘what a waste place’.
Maybe a waste place, but at least a boldly colored one with the bright red of crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.
Actually it’s not that bad since the rains came back. Things are growing again and since someone mentioned daylilies let me start with those 😉
Daylily ‘Brookside Sparkle’, a souvenir from one of last summer’s daylily farm visits, and so much better than a t-shirt.
The daylily farm is doing well but ten out of ten people have suggested that I make it bigger, even if the suggestion was more of a nod when I said I was planning to make it bigger… and it was more like one person and not ten, but statistically that’s 100% of the people surveyed and why bother doing customer research if you’re going to ignore it? To that end I have budgeted $60 to buy more daylilies this summer, and also as any wise investor will do I’ve taken inflation into consideration and will be willing to raise that limit to $75 if things go that way. Now I just have to pickaxe a few new planting beds.
I’m committing to no more heavy equipment in the yard and will finally level and plant this access area by the street. It needs to be lowered a few inches and dug up for compaction and rocks… and about 25 square feet of concrete I uncovered for which I’ll need to drag out the jackhammer again…
So dirt moving and daylilies. That seems to be the theme for 2023 and I hope you can see a little progress in the next few photos.
Along the side of the house the grade was brought down a few inches, leveled, rocks were dug and finally, now that it looks like rain might be a thing again, a grass path has been seeded between a new bed and the old cholchicum bed which runs alongside the house foundation. The daylily farm is visible on the right… isn’t it beautiful?
Nearly all the tons of soil alongside the new addition have been wheel-barrowed to the low spots behind the potager in the back of the yard. Many rocks have been uncovered, some barely movable but mostly small, and these will go into lining the path of grass which will be seeded and extend down to the back of the house. As you can see the house foundation is still waiting for the masonary fund to mature, and might have to wait a year or two especially if the daylily fund keeps taking precedence.
Excavation piles are finally gone, and you can again see through to the pond and potager. One last section of soil to move, and then it’s on to wall building, final grading, and then grass-path seeding. The area in front is the already-seeded path which runs alongside the house.
Seeing the garden slowly uncover has been a relief, and each new section replanted has been one less weedy mess to ignore on the daily garden tours, but the real excitement has been seeing the level areas beyond the potager grow wider and wider each week. There is grass coming up on the new paths and whenever I get a minute in my mind I’m planting and replanting the open sections of the new flatlands. One day it’s filled with pumpkins, the next it’s daylilies, then tulips, then daffodils, then a new greenhouse, then a snowdrop farm… I think you get the idea, but right now it’s sterile, rocky, dries-like-concrete fill and even in my most optimistic minute I know I don’t have the time or energy to do anything with it this year, so I’ve decided it’s going to be my new waste place.
To shade and hold a bit of moisture in the “soil” I’ve started throwing weeds down and any other trimmings and organic material that usually gets thrown in the compost. I’m letting weeds come up. I’ll probably let them go to seed and then regret it when I have even more weeds, but whatever. I’m hoping the birds and other wildlife will like it, and to help that along I picked up a $3 box of finch and canary seed from the petstore to throw around. It’s basically pure millet and I think the sparrows and doves will enjoy it if they mature into a seedy mess, and hopefully I don’t regret a millet field in the back of my yard…. and now with that in print I’m thinking I should have at least looked up what millet looks like or done any kind of research, but…
My better half asked what the plan is for this back area. I thought it better to say ‘I’m not sure’ rather than explain how it was to become a ‘waste place’.
So we will see where this ends up. The birds and rabbits seem quite pleased by the general weediness of the yard, and I’ve never seen quite the procession of baby rabbits coming out of the flower beds as I have this year, but there has been one uninvited guest who I do not appreciate.
Deer tracks in some of the freshly leveled soil of the back 40
There is a single deer who has begun to make a habit of visiting the garden. One deer who has walked through perhaps four times and I’m already nearly apoplectic over the damage and I can’t imaging people suffering through local deer herds in their neighborhood. I thought our visitor was a large doe with a fawn hidden nearby, but Friday afternoon showed it to be a he as the nubs of developing antlers were visible when chasing him out of the yard. Maybe I can convince one of my friends that begonias and geranium adds a special flavor to the sausage, and one of them will be willing to stake out my yard come November… assuming I can make it that long… but in the meantime a minefield of fencing seems to be entertaining him, even if not really slowing him down.
Something random. My first flower on this cobra lily (Aarisaema fargesii) and it has a cool way to it, but I still think it’s the tropical foliage that impressed me more.
Typical. He plants for wildlife and then gets upset when wildlife shows up. Maybe all the digging is going to my head, as well as the heat and humidity, so today’s day of rest is probably a good thing.
Hope you have a great week.
sorta like suburbia 
“One day it’s filled with pumpkins, the next it’s daylilies, then tulips, then daffodils, then a new greenhouse, then a snowdrop farm… ” I vote greenhouse!
And to heck with the masonry fund.
I’d love a greenhouse, but it sounds like so much additional work, and it never rains inside a greenhouse so that’s more watering, and there’s the heat and giving up another plot of soil… says the person who brought the idea up in the first place 😉
I’m glad you’ve thought it through. Those would be my reasons as well, in addition to having trouble finding a flat piece of ground that wasn’t soggy. What I think I would like is a setup similar to my friend Bub’s, who had a lean-to type structure attached to her garage, which functioned like a walk-in cold frame. All her flats of seedlings got a head start in there.
I was wondering when the ‘no-deer’ fairytale was going to come to an end! You have my sympathies. You’ll be adding ‘deer resistant’ to all your new plant choices. 😉
They love hosta, hemerocallis and true lilies, so maybe run down to the box store for some Repels-All. Spray it down-wind, at the end of the day, and wash yourself and clothes right away… It smells god-awful until it dries, but works well. I’ve tried Irish Spring in net bags with some success, and fishing line strung between bamboo stakes. They walk into it at chest level, it’s invisible, but seems to deter them. It is a cheap deterrent around beds and edges, but if they are running, of course, will go right through it.
Nice to see your progress in the garden. I like the daylily farm… looks nice with the stonewall and hydrangea behind it. I esp. like the combo of crocosmia and ‘Tiger Eyes’ sumac. Is it stoloniferous? I have wild sumac in my yard and it sends up new shoots all over. I like its form, BUT….
Deer-free has been such a nice ride, but I’m still hoping that hunting season will clear things out again. I think this buck was around last year as well but stayed a little more to the woods, but now he’s getting bigger and bolder… but also more attractive to someone looking for a bigger buck. So far I laid down some wire fencing which has been somewhat successful, and I was thinking about the fishing line, but I know spraying isn’t something I want to get into. I tried it once with the crocus and rabbits and thought it was too much money and I was way to inconsistent with keeping up, yet I’m willing to consider fencing or even an electric fence. Just think how much fun an unmarked electric fence and neighborhood kids could be! Of course I would be the one most likely to be shocked lol
The sumac takes a while to get the roots down, but once it starts suckering you find them all over. I find it easy to yank them up where I don’t want them but I’m sure not everyone has that kind of garden.
Let’s hope you get plenty of Indigo Buntings in your waste space. Goodness, I am over awed by your day lily fund. Are daylilies the new snowdrops? Why do you need so many? I get why you need so many snowdrops, tulips or daffodils, but I’m not sure why you have to fill your garden with daylilies, although ‘ Brookside Sparkle’ is very pretty. I love the arisaema.
Let me make it clear that daylilies are not the new snowdrop, and the entire daylily fund will barely cover the cost of one fancy snowdrop… although I’ve been very good, and have been mostly trading rather than buying anything which is nice. Also nearly all of the daylilies have been gifts, so that helps, and I think I just wanted something easy for the summer. I guess I’m trying to defend my position, which of course interprets as guilt, but I promise this will be a short-lived obsession! -unless it’s not of course, and that would be embarrassing.
All our plant obsessions are short lived and fortunately before we fill the entire garden with one particular species, there is always something new coming into season to spend our money on. Day lilies don’t do it for me, but currently I am getting a bit obsessed with echinaceas. Fortunately, I am just getting over the urge to grow nothing but roses.
Liquid Fence is my deer repellent of choice. It does smell of rotten egg the evening you smell it but isn’t that noticeable the next day and then it’s fine after that. Spray the 2nd time 1 or 2 weeks later and then only once a month.
I just downloaded Merlin from Cornell Ornithology yesterday. It records the bird calls around you and tells you what the species are. I’ve only seen an Indigo Bunting here a couple of times down by our big pond, but Merlin listed it as one of the birds in the trees around me when I ran it yesterday evening and then again this morning. So you may have them and just not realize it!
Good luck with your waste place. It might become your favorite garden. Our unmown back yard turned back into the field it once was, and was full of gold finches in the spring.
Hmmm. I just went on about how I could never manage a spraying program, but once a month sounds do-able, and a day of rotten eggs can be timed for a day I’m not out there so much… I guess I’ll take a look at the prices.
I will probably end up with Merlin by the end of the week lol, I keep seeing the reports and now I’m curious as to how this area ranks. I was on the porch this morning and could hear swamp birds over by the retaining pond, and woodland birds over towards the trees, and plenty of meadow birds around the lawns, and it sounded very varied. I would really laugh if Indigo bunting showed up on the first day!
I already love the unmown lawn in the back (it’s absolutely hated by others here) but would love a seedy area where the birds are in and out of all day. Usually I have more sunflowers, but the dry weather kept them from germinating like they normally do, and the ones which did are quite stunted, Next year the waste area might be a sunflower and corn field. The goldfinches and chickadees would love that and maybe the corn could bring in pheasants… although I haven’t seen a pheasant since the last time I grew corn…
When you really get hooked on daylilies, it might cost $60-$75 for one plant. lol The deer managed to get quite a few of mine just before they opened this year but hopefully the spray I sprayed last week didn’t all get washed away with this last rain.
I don’t like how you said “when” you get hooked rather than “if” I get hooked… and I hate to admit it but I already looked at daylilies which were much more than the $60-$75 range… but so far am safe from anything more than $25. Fortunately I don’t really have enough room to go too crazy, and the the way I don’t finish projects around the house there’s no way we could quickly sell and buy a farm 😉
I hope the spray saves the rest of your buds!
Love all your replies to people as much as your post. I used to be a member of the Wisconsin Daylily Society, so I know it is easy to get hooked. Luckily I had a small garden then and only had dwarf daylilies. Pretty much put me off the big, new tetraploids that are pricey. But hey, nothing compared to snowdrop mania and prices. Luckily I don’t have an in-person snowdrop event close enough to go to or that would be a real problem. Our waste space used to be the slope below the Tea House. For years it wasn’t planted and we threw all the pond goop on it when we cleaned the pond. Best soil on the place now. Love your Crocosmia. I just have the tag marking the spot this year. It’s always something.
Your daylilies are so colorful. Your entire garden has a lot of color now. It looks great. All of your improvements are coming around and looking good too. Keep on… I would be out there running around chasing away the deer. That is much worse than rabbits. Deer can eat whole plants. UGH… Waste land, funny. I remember when I first got here my husband called this place Weedy Wallow. I am glad that I didn’t go with that even tho it described how he saw the garden. Ha… Have a good week.
Ooh, a greenhouse would be a wonderful idea! A ‘waste place’ is just another form of ‘rewilding’ isn’t it? And that is all the rage in the UK at the moment. 😉 But wildlife can be a problem… luckily we don’t have anything too big visiting us. The biggest has been a fox, I think. And Mr and Mrs Fox have been keeping the hare population low. Love the day lily farm. When will it be open to visitors?
I’ll be interested to see what happens with your waste space. Have you ever thought of planting natives? I promise not to get on a soapbox here… I am letting some sunflowers grow from spilled seed this year, just because the goldfinches love them and I’m surprised to see them growing altogether, for years they have supposedly poisoned themselves out of business. Although I have never had an Indigo Bunting in my yard, I do get some interesting birds during migration with the natives.