2024 Pumpkins to 2025 Dahlias

We had a good pumpkin patch again in 2024. The only disappointment was the varmints nibbling at the ripe gourds. Why can’t they just pick one and eat it? One at a time? Plenty to go around.

I got about 30 pumpkins this year.

This bed is 2 years old and is a work in progress. So this year I decided to put down a cover crop - 7 seed mix with clover, oats, hairy vetch, daikon radishes etc. No sooner had I seeded than my bed became a huge bird feeder. So I covered it with a weed fabric and prayed that the birds hadn’t gotten all of them.

fast forward a week and I returned and peeked under the fabric. Voilà! Lots of sprouts.

Let’s hope the rabbits leave it alone.

Next year I think it will be dahlias! Very excited!

Mom's favorite?

I love this shrub because of my mom. We had one outside of our kitchen window when I was growing up. It was beautiful when it bloomed. My mom loved it most when the birds came and ate the seeds. I can still hear her happiness, especially when there was a cardinal feeding on it.

I love it because it is a bee magnet.

We also have a mock orange, another shrub that mom loved, and I’ve planted two lilacs (her favorite shrub too).

I never asked her what her favorite was. She would have needed to do a top 10.

The Shed

I call 5813 Bellona “the lot” but others like “the Farmette” or “the Hobbit House”. Behind the house is a long narrow plot of ground, which was dominated by walnut trees and a canopy of Trumpet vines (with vines 6” in diameter). It was a jungle, but that is another story.

Some kind of business operated at 5813 but I haven’t been able to find out what. There was a shed behind the house with another power going into it to handle all of Homeland’s electric needs.

Shed with Vines

Now welcome our flower gardeners extraordinaire, the Joneses!

Flowers where shed used to be

We are really just getting started. So much prep work had to be done, and there is so much still to reinvigorate our soil.

The Beginning

The “Farmette” project started back in 2015 when I wrote to the listed owner of 5813 Bellona in SDAT. My wife and I lived around the corner at that time and walked by the house imagining the owner was sunning somewhere on a warm beach.

That wasn’t the case, however. I soon found out that the house was very much occupied. After a bumpy introduction lasting about 10 minutes when Rebecca called and yelled at me non-stop, we found we had a shared love of movies and that created a bond between us.

Here is the house around that time

Farmette circa 2017

It took a while but we got the house uncovered. No sooner did we than the city required us to paint it.

Initially the idea was to take it down, but I soon found that doing something like that in the city is not easy to do.

And so, here it is, with a fresh coat of paint.

Freshly painted