September 1927

The Staff of Life

The Ins and Outs of a Homey Home

THE Piersons live in Minneapolis. Not down town in an apartment; not in a residential section where the lots are small, but out in the suburbs where there is room for hosts of flowers, trees, an orchard, and all of the things that go to making pleasant home surroundings. Here, there is plenty of room for the children to play and ever so many interesting things for them to do-- just like in the real country.

A Guide to Good Landscaping

RIGHT now is a good time to plan your home grounds. In fact any time except the spring planting season is a desirable season for the preparation of plans. For planning should come before action. No good general goes into battle without a plan.

When Your Children Go to College

GRAYSON has never been to college, but he has come to believe that there is something worthwhile in a college education, something that perhaps gives a college man a little the edge on the man without such training, and so he is rather sold on the idea of sending his children to college. His business friends are doing it, and as his boy and girl are growing up he begins to look into what will happen when his children go to college.

Homes of Outstanding American Women

DELIGHTED if you would lunch with me Monday one o'clock my home 444 Andover St. Stop. Leaving for South that afternoon. Edith Nourse Rogers." This telegram reached me in Providence, where my three boys and I were spending the week-end with friends; and, for a moment, I "saw black" with disappointment, for it looked as if it would be impossible for me to accent Mrs. Rogers' invitation-- unless I could corral an airship!

Ideas From Other People's Homes

NEARLY all of us like to make inspection visits to houses that are in process of construction --especially to those that are just nearing completion. With some, no doubt, the incentive is merely idle curiosity; with others of us, however, it is constituted of a sincere desire to glean ideas. The former, perhaps, are at least excusable; at any rate, the motive of the latter is unquestionably not only pardonable but highly commendable.

Your Next Year's Flower Garden

BORN with the coming of autumn are hopes for the glory of the garden of another season. This is the time to plan and to plant for next year. It is the ideal time for transplanting seedlings of perennials and biennials; for setting out iris and peonies and those lords of the garden in early June, the oriental poppies; and for planting tulips, hyacinths, narcissi and all of those little bulb flowers which have been so truly called "the lights of spring."

Good Pictures are Always in Fashion

SOME of the things you have thought about pictures in home decoration may not be true; but here is one thing that I'll guarantee is true: Pictures are as essential to the proper furnishing of a home as the dining room table or the kitchen range.

Under the Library Lamp

IT is August, a vacation month, that I write this, and the editor of Under the Library Lamp needs just that much of an excuse to permit herself to leave the regular literary highroad and explore a few luring little bookish bypaths.

Electrical Tips For the Home Builder

BEFORE deciding to build, you no doubt will draw your plans of what you would like your new house to be and then consult an architect who will endeavor to incorporate your ideas, combined with his own, into a working set of plans. Next comes the cost of construction which will include foundations, frame, openings (doors and windows), roofing, wiring, interior finishing, plumbing and all the other usual specifications.

Melody Harmony Rhythm

HAVE you ever been confronted with this question: "Are you musical?" Perhaps you have answered: "No, I neither sing nor play." If so, your answer has shown a complete misunderstanding of the case. Because you are not a performer, it by no means follows that you are unmusical.

Those Harmful "Harmless" Diseases

EACH year, some time after the Christmas holidays, every mother of young children digs herself in for a two or three months' campaign against the "children's diseases." Primary and kindergarten teachers prepare for decimated ranks, and even in the upper grades the onward press of education stumbles and halts while relays of boys and girls enjoy a course of measles, whooping-cough, chickenpox or diphtheria.

The Charm of Window Fransparencies

KEEP a little touch of summer in your home all the year. When the days are gray look thru the window and see a flower garden in miniature where some of your favorites are framed between two pieces of glass. Window transparencies are perhaps as old as windows and they have been made of many different materials but none of them more interesting than pressed flowers.

Porch floors of Lasting Beauty

SO much of the attractiveness of the sunroom or sun porch depends upon the floor that you may well spend as much time and thought planning it as you would thinking and planning the curtains for the windows, which, I am sure, is quite a lot.

Beware of Apple Scald

NEARLY everyone who has tried to buy Grimes or Rhode Island Greening apples from the grocery between midwinter and spring is familiar with apple scald. This is the brown tinting or discoloration of the skin of the apple that gives it the appearance of being rotten. In severe cases the entire surface of the apple is involved, the tissue directly beneath being dry and corky or sometimes becoming soft and watery.

Do You Know This Wild Flower?

DOWN along the creek, in colorful profusion, grows the pickerel weed, so-called because the fish known as pickerel has the habit of laying its eggs at the base of this mud dweller. Pickerel weed thrives only in wet, marshy places such as the margins of ponds, the banks of flowing streams and the heart of swamps.

Article

For the Home Craftsman

ANYONE who can use a few tools and who has the spare time can make the nursery furniture shown here. Each piece was carefully planned not for the professional but for the handy man whose supply of tools is small and whose knowledge of cabinet-making is limited.

TO JACK-O-DANDY

Fall Garden Reminders

THE best time to divide outdoor lily- of-the-valley is in the fall when the leaves begin to turn yellow. Take up the clumps and pull them apart, replanting each pip separately three or four inches apart in a rich, loose soil. The bells next spring will be twice as large as those grown in a crowded bed of poor soil.

Article

Needlework Instructions

ON the opposite page is shown an attractive set for porch or sunroom use, consisting of table cover or tea cloth, cushion, and cover for swing back or wicker settle. The work may be done in chain or heavy outline stitch in one or two colors. Transfer pattern No. 263, blue, 20 cents, gives motifs for table cover; pattern No. 264, blue, 35 cents, gives motifs for swing cover and cushion.

Backyard Beekeeping

THE joys of backyard beekeeping are yearly being experienced by more and more city dwellers. What can add more prestige to the informal private area than a neat row of white hives with their industrious inhabitants arriving heavy laden with nectar and pollen to be converted into "bee-bread" for the pearly larvae?

A Famous Floral Clock

MANY years ago there was a wonderful old garden in the French quarter of New Orleans, known far and wide as "the Judge's garden." Those who visited the place said it was indeed a garden of enchantment, a fairyland of beauty and fragrance. Here grew to perfection, not only rare exotics from many distant lands, but woodland treasures from the southern forests, stately magnolias, with perfumed white chalices gleaming above the rich dark foliage, fragrant pink azaleas, crimson-blossomed Judas trees and scores of other beautiful shrubs and trees.

ACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK

YESTERDAY evening on my way home from work I paused for a moment where a crowd of youngsters were splashing riotously in one of the wading pools furnished by the city for the enjoyment of just such children. The scene called to mind other days when I myself had splashed in natural pools fed by cold spring water, pools overhung by the branches of trees growing on the bank of the creek that ran thru our neighbor's pasture.