Letting the Yard Go (On Purpose)

Somewhere between spring optimism and midsummer reality, the yard stopped being a project and started being… a place.

The grass isn’t exactly even. A few leaves never made it to the compost pile. There’s a corner near the trees that was meant to be “dealt with” and quietly wasn’t. Not out of neglect, exactly—more like acceptance. The kind that arrives when you realize nature doesn’t work on a weekend schedule.

What’s interesting is that the birds noticed long before we did.

They show up earlier now. They linger. Sparrows hop through the leaf litter like they’re flipping through a well-stocked pantry. Juncos vanish into places that would have looked “messy” a few months ago. No confusion. No hesitation. Just business as usual.

It turns out what we tend to see as clutter is actually infrastructure.

Leaves hold warmth and insects. Seed heads hang around longer when they’re not trimmed back. Taller grasses break the wind and offer cover from predators. A yard that looks unfinished to us is, to wildlife, fully furnished.

The birds don’t care if the lawn edges aren’t sharp - they care that there’s shelter on cold mornings and food when the ground freezes. They care that something is still alive underfoot when everything else looks quiet.

In the Berkshires, this makes a certain kind of sense. We live in a place where winters are long, springs arrive when they feel like it, and the weather always has the final say. The idea that a yard should stay perfectly tidy year-round feels a little optimistic—if not slightly unrealistic.

Letting the yard go, even just a little, isn’t giving up. It’s choosing care over control.

Control looks like constant intervention: mowing, raking, trimming back anything that grows out of bounds. Care sometimes looks like restraint. Watching. Waiting. Leaving well enough alone. Trusting that the landscape knows what it’s doing—because it’s been doing this longer than we have.

The goldenrod and primrose look finished now—brown, brittle, doing nothing decorative at all. But from the kitchen window, they’re clearly still open for business. Finches cling to the stems, bobbing and swaying in the harsh Winter wind like they’re on something just short of a thrill ride. Others pick through the seed heads with surprising focus, stopping only to squabble briefly over who saw it first.

There’s a quiet relief in that. In not treating every fallen leaf as a problem to solve. In realizing that a slightly wild corner can be doing more good than a perfectly maintained one.

But it's not just about less work —though that part doesn’t hurt.

What I keep coming back to is how satisfying it is to watch the birds visit the plants we’re usually so quick to clean up. I notice them while I drink my coffee in the morning, from my desk in the afternoons while I work, and then while washing dishes as the light fades and the yard settles.

It turns out the yard holds my attention longer than most things on a screen, with no subscription required.