The home of

George and Ellen Long, on Ga. Highway 92 just north of Fayetteville, looks

like most of the houses in the area from the road, with perhaps the slight

exception of the Spanish moss growing on a tree in the front yard.

The moss, which

George imported from southern Alabama, is a rarity this far north, he

says. But more than that, it's a perfect example of the uniqueness of

this home, especially the outdoors.

Walk to the

back yard and you'll notice that this couple enjoys working outside. A

closer look reveals a bit more.

"Everything

you see here, we built," he said, pointing at the workshop, a shed,

numerous benches and trellises, a gazebo all but the swimming pool and

tennis court.

To say these

two are handy around the house would be an understatement. The Longs have

taken things that other people would send straight to the landfill and

used them to make an outdoor showplace.

Take the shed,

for example. When a neighbor tore down his fence about six years ago and

was ready to throw out his scrap lumber, George asked if he could have

it instead. A short time later, he had a convenient place to store various

gardening tools and supplies, along with a number of fascinating things

found in the dirt.

Having spent

so much time digging for their assorted planting projects (George says

Ellen is the gardener, and he's just the "strong back"), they

have unearthed a few tools that were left decades earlier by whoever lived

or worked there. Pieces of an old hoe, or a pair of pliers used only for

square bolts these and other items hang on the outside wall of the shed

to give the area a more rustic feel.

The gazebo

that sits in the back yard has perhaps an even more fascinating history.

It grew out of a photo in a magazine, with the help of a very old house

in another county.

Ellen saw a

picture in Southern Living of a gazebo in Newnan. She took it to George

and said, "Build this." To this day, they have never seen the

original structure in person.

So he went

to work, and once again his neighbor was a big help. It seemed the neighbor's

son had bought an old house somewhere between here and Columbus and was

having to tear down a great deal of it to renovate it. "If you want

any of the old lumber or bricks, just drive down there and you can have

it," he said.

That was all

George needed to hear. He brought back scores of old bricks from several

fireplaces that stood in the old house, plus a lot of lumber. The results

of that trip can be seen all over the Longs' 2.5-acre property.

As for the

gazebo, a glance at the ceiling from the inside reveals burn marks on

the wood from where it made up the wall behind the stove of the old house.

"I thought about painting it, but I decided it looked better as it

was," George said. "Now it's got a story behind it."

Bricks from

the house surround the gazebo, and are also scattered throughout the garden

and around the fountain in the Longs' front yard. They have a unique,

aged look also.

One way to

tell how old the bricks are, George says, is by seeing how they react

to moisture and cold. If they get wet and freeze, the older bricks, which

were made differently than modern bricks are made, can split. Then he

replaces them.

The furniture

inside the gazebo is made completely out of lumber from the same old house.

Other garden benches in the back yard were made that way as well, and

George is still using lumber from the old house to build things today.

George and

Ellen recently were the subject of some attention when a huge white oak

tree in their back yard was measured and found to be one of the largest

trees in Georgia. It's one of 42 varieties of trees found on the property,

George said.

One of the

Longs' biggest projects underway now is the development of a "garden

parterre," which is a French term for a garden that is symmetrical

in its layout. When completed, this garden will have a round center area

surrounded by four even corners, and observers will be able to walk around

and through it to admire the various plant arrangements.

A kind of trellis,

called a tuteur, is a common sight in the Longs' back yard. George has

built a number of these structures that he has not even set up yet, and

others for friends who ask him to.

This project

also originated from a picture Ellen showed him, and after tweaking the

design slightly to suit him, he came up with an excellent device to help

give their gardens a third dimension allowing plants to grow farther up

and even wrap around each trellis.

Across the

driveway from the front yard fountain sits a stone wall, about two feet

high and 60 feet long, running along the side of the driveway. The fact

that it sits there at all is almost an accident.

Soon after

moving in some 17 years ago, George was digging in the front yard when

he came upon a large stone buried in the ground. The more he dug, the

larger the stone became.

He unearthed

that stone, then another appeared. When all was said and done, the entire

stone wall was found underground, each piece lying on its side, in essentially

the same order they now sit above the ground.

George stood

them upright, cleaned them up, and added some mortar so the soil behind

them (the ground is raised on the other side of the wall from the driveway)

would not wash through the gaps. Today it looks like new. "I have

no idea why it was buried in the first place," George said.

Maybe it's

just to provide one more interesting story to go with one more interesting

home project. As you pull out toward the highway and take one last look

toward the house, you see the stone wall. And when you think about it

later, you can't help but wonder what the Longs might be digging up today.