Jim and Melissa Cockey
9977 Chelsea Lake Road
All decorated for Halloween, Jim and Melissa Cockey live in Deercreek with two of their children; Ben (11), who likes fishing and Luke (13), who masterminds their holiday displays. A blended family, they have 5 children in total, with their 3 adult children in the Midwest – with careers in mental health, forestry and logistics.
Jim and Melissa moved to Deercreek, their first home together, in 2021. Most mornings, you’ll find Jim taking his daily 4-mile walk around Deercreek. And, they love to play golf and typically walk 9 holes. Melissa says this is their ‘forever’ home – they cannot imagine better neighbors or surroundings!
With their yard next to a natural area, they love the satisfaction of preserving the land and helping to beautify the neighborhood. Melissa said “It’s actually quite a fun challenge to work around the deer and find plants that tolerate a variety of conditions. We also do a fair amount of harvesting from our yard – nearly 8 pounds YTD – of herbs, citrus, berries and tomatoes. It’s not much, but it’s a start!”
They told us their biggest improvement has been controlling the invasive grapevines. “Identifiable by heart shaped leaves, grapevines are well suited to our climate, disease and deer resistant and grow about 2 feet a week! Given these advantages, the vines quickly take over large areas. By taking these vines out by the root vs. herbicides, we’ve slowly brought back the forest. Where trees were toppled formerly, we now have new baby pines and native bays thriving.”
Jim also does an amazing job of grooming the large population of philodendrons found throughout their yard, Jim does the mowing, edging, and bush trimming and Melissa helps with weeding, moral support, and filling the garden cart with new plants.
