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.

Cast Iron Plants

Brother and his wife donated a big pot of iron plants for Fio to plant in place of the fungus-ridden sages she'd had to hack out, for which she is very grateful, but she didn't realize how hard it would be to separate the individual stems for planting. She tried a screw driver, scissors, a hammer, a shovel, a pick, and, finally, her chain saw. The plant sacrificed several young blades by throwing them into the chain to foul up the saw and save their community as a whole, but Fiorella prevailed and now has enough rooted stems to finish off the west side of the house.

She also understands how that plant got its name.