HAVE MOWER, HOE, AND SHOVEL, will travel

Everywhere that Fiorella and Husband have lived, they've improved the looks of the land, even from their very first residence, a duplex with a neglected postage-stamp-sized front yard which they not only mowed and watered, but planted with a camelia and two azealias. Then, when they moved to a two-bedroom house two years later, they planted red sage around the front porch and created a little pond in the back yard, bordering it with yuccas, irises, and crocuses.

In their first "boughten" home, they added three ashes to the front yard, mimosas to the side yards, and cottonwoods to the back yard, then rooted St. Augustine grass, laid a paving-stone path from the garage to the front porch, espaliered pyrocantha on a front wall, and planted boxwoods and daffodils. The yard of their next house, where their children grew up, received a full frontal make-over involving a swooping line of boxwoods and pittosporums, balanced by ligustrums and mountain laurels on the side of the house.

Because their curent abode is in the middle of a five-acre cedar-hardwood jungle, Fio and Husband have spent more time chain-sawing than planting, but they have managed to start a boxwood hedge around the north garden, which they had to replant with nandenas, gardenias, ligustrums, and bayberries after a disastrous professional job. The west garden is still in need, but Fio is confident she and Husband will eventually get it shaped up. After all, landscaping and gardening are their specialties.