This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.

I'm Lizzy Peabody. Patty. Patty Storms and Morty Bekar are really proud of their backyard.

There's a vegetable garden, shade trees, bushes for pollinators.

We also love to make sure that something is blooming at all times

and to create a lot of texture.

I went to see their garden for myself on a rainy summer

afternoon. We stood on their screened-in porch looking out on the centerpiece of

the yard, a jacuzzi-sized pond. There's a little rock waterfall and scream.

We have birds bathing in the stream

and, you know, the frogs and now the fish

stopping turtles.

Their garden has won awards. It was featured in the 2021

Louis Delaware Garden Tour, a big deal in this little coastal community.

And the people who went on that tour got a chance to see Patty

and Mortis prized fish, 30 of them, including two large coy fish, both rescues.

We became very attached to the fish and it sounds funny to some I'm sure but they have

personalities. There were some that would come quicker or do funny things when we arrived.

And so you really got to know them and we felt that they were really part of the family.

One morning, just like any other morning,

Mordee poured himself a cup of coffee,

slid open the back door,

and walked into his garden.

...