September 1929

The Little Miss in Blue

Along the Garden Path

SEPTEMBER is the month when summer is departing, when fruits are maturing, when boys and girls are returning to school. It is the time to think of bulb planting, assembling winter protection, the time to look about the garden and make desired changes.

Up in the Nursery Playing with the Children

The Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener

SEPTEMBER 1. When I went out early this morning, fired with ambition to get in a spell of hoeing before breakfast, I saw, to my astonishment, wisps of smoke coming up from the center of the big compost heap where I have been stacking weeds and debris for the past two summers.

The Galaxy of Bulbs for Spring

THE forethought of autumn bulb planting results in the glorious satisfactions of springtime. With respect to the bulbs as well as to perennials, American taste is changing in the planting of flowers. The circular and square beds of red and yellow tulips are going. Marching rows of daffodils, bizarre ribbons, and clashing mixtures are yielding to freer and more naturalistic arrangements and more subtle combinations of colors and varieties.

Building Your "Next House" First

I HAVE admired the distinction and the suavity of life in a large house, and have tried to catch the spirit of it in a house within the means of the average house planner. I have first taken, perforce, a good look at my purse, and have then tried to pare down my dream without sacrificing its spiritual quality.

City Services, Wherever You Live

TO THE homemaker, the great advantage of life in a city is in the services and conveniences that relieve her of effort and forethought in her household tasks: light, heat, and power at the turn of a switch, the cleanliness and speed of gas for cooking, the comforts of modern plumbing, and the simplified disposal of garbage and other wastes.

Have You Had a Garden Pilgrimage?

THE success of the Georgetown garden show, or pilgrimage, in May of this year, should serve as an inspiration and model for garden clubs everywhere. True, every city or town may not have as many fine old gardens within a limited radius as are to be found in the old Georgetown section of Washington, D. C., but every community has its interesting and even elaborate gardens that all garden-lovers yearn to visit.

Louisiana Gardens With Little Effort

MANY persons who love flowers and long for a year of beauty and fragrance may gain courage to start a garden, for they are no busier than I am. First of all, plant everything you get into your hands, if it is a flowering plant or even a sprig from a tree or bush with beautiful foliage. You will be surprised to see how many of them grow. Plant them and then leave them alone. Do not waste time nursing delicate things, for there are too many hardy ones that bloom without care.

Furniture Periods That Harmonize

OF ALL the furniture styles which have been followed in this country, none has achieved such wide and lasting popularity as the Georgian, which is the name given to that era of English history between 1714 and 1820, when four Georges reigned in succession. During this period English cabinet-making reached its fullest flower under the skilled hands of the two Chippendales (both named Thomas), George Heppelwhite, Thomas Sheraton, and the Adam brothers, and was reflected in this country by the products of Duncan Phyfe and lesser lights.

What the Bureau of Standards Is Doing for the Home Builder

IF YOU want to buy or build a house, paint or decorate one, lay linoleum on the kitchen floor, construct a radio set, cook a leg of lamb, adjust your automobile headlights, keep moths from dining off your tuxedo, lay out a vegetable garden, transplant a tree, churn cream cheese, make a pair of rompers for the baby, lay a good driveway, drive a nail, or put in a screw so it will hold-- if you want to do any one of these or a thousand other things-- ask Uncle Sam about it.

A Sophomore's Father Checks Up the Cost

JOHN McWILLIAMS is a typical successful man. He has made himself a success financially and socially by hard, honest work and an intense desire to do his best. He has one son, Ray; and Ray is now a sophomore in the state university.

Assembling the Garden Coverlets

THE weeks when we are covering and tucking in the garden for winter are most delightful and wholly satisfying ones. "Weeks!" you exclaim. Yes, the weeks, for we live in Iowa, where our snows do not lie as fleecy blankets all winter long over our garden. We begin to cover early and we do it gradually.

Hardy Annuals for Fall Sowing

ANNUALS are as necessary for the summer garden as are the tulips, daffodils, and other bulbous plants for the spring garden. Many annuals flower magnificently on poor soil, and with a few exceptions they need no special digging of the soil nor are they particular in their fertilizer requirements.

Making Your Own Climate

FRESH, sweet air, properly warmed or cooled, as the case might require, can be had within our houses as well as out under the blue sky of a perfect May day, if we wish it. Everyone of us consumes six times as much air as food.

The Basement Beautified

ALTHO in the average home there has always been a need for more space, it has remained for automatic heating-- oil and gas-- to direct attention to the existence of this space in the cellar. Now cellars have blossomed, or are getting ready to blossom, into model laundries or entire service units, into playrooms, social halls and recreation rooms, gymnasiums, and in some instances garages.

Gardened Church Grounds

IT IS a delightful sight to see a church building of a suitable type of architecture standing in the midst of a generous-sized lot surrounded with smooth-shaven, velvety lawns, stately trees, and tidy flowers. It is a standing invitation to those who pass by to "come and behold the works of the Lord."

With the Junior Garden Clubs of AMERICA

I KNOW that the Junior Garden Club members can scarcely wait to start upon their third great adventure in gardening. So I have planned an activity for my merry troop of gardeners that is very appropriate for school days-- that of "Civic Endeavor."

A Genius of an Understanding Heart

UP, UP a steep, quaint, winding, stone street, tucked away in a wooded ravine-- a by-street fragrant with the scent of pines, eucalyptus, cedars, and fringed with ferns-- even the just a stone's throw from the rushing streams of Hollywood's traffic, I climbed.

If the Baby Could Select His Parents

NEARLY every book on mental health that I have sofar seen starts out, and rightly, no doubt, with a discussion of what mental health is, and in a course on the subject I took a summer or so ago, one of six precious weeks was devoted to defining the term.

Experiencing a Southern Interlude

IT WAS quite the most exciting telegram I had ever received, and it came from my friend, Constance Moore, whom I had not seen since we were in training together at St. Luke's Hospital, ten years before.

Toast and Toasted Sandwiches

CRUNCHY, brown slices of the staff of life play an important role in presentday meals. For long ages they have been favored at the breakfast table. Promotion to the other daily repasts was a natural result.

Serve It in Colored Glassware

FROM the many fashion phases in table service we now emerge and rise to the colored-glass era. For it seems that we who came to scoff at that juxtaposition of many colored and gay-hued glasswares, where once had been only the cold and shining white with silver of our formally distinguished tables, have remained to enjoy doubly the taste of our soup from amber, topaz, or amethyst-colored soup plates.

"Pyrofax is the most wonderful thing I have ever used ... I have seen city gas stoves that were not nearly as nice as mine"

MRS. R-- is perfectly right about her gas range. There are a great many in the city not nearly as nice as hers and she lives many miles away from a city gas supply. She has real gas to cook with and a splendid modern gas range because she uses Pyrofax Gas Service.

Things for the College Dormitory

THESE pet pillows-- polly, pussy, and the pup-- would almost brighten a lonely corner on no-date night! They are cunning little companions of black, white, and red felt on blue-sateen box pillows, all put together with a piping strip of red felt. Complete materials for making are in each order, and they are made with a minimum of effort.

Aids to Better Housekeeping

THE right tool for the right purpose is no less necessary in cake baking than in carpentering, piano tuning, or any skilled trade. Valuable material and more valuable time are often wasted by baking a good cake in the wrong pan.

These Are Mothers' Methods

I OFTEN care for my own grandchildren, and I find it very easy to amuse them, tho I do not have many real playthings.

FLOWER-ARRANGEMENT CONTEST

Bringing the Outdoors Into the Living-Room

WE ALL have a dream castle that is perfection to our imagination. Mr. A. S. Buskirk of Independence, Ohio, has dreamed many lovely dreams that have come true, and one of these ideals was in his mind for many years before it took shape in solid brick and stone on a broad hillside overlooking the Cuyahoga River valley.

Books That Help the Teacher

EACH of us has a different conception of the world we live in. Historically, geographically, spiritually, it is one thing to you and another thing to me, and probably, if we only realized it, the books we read as children (and later, tho certainly our early reading had the most to do with it) have been largely responsible for our varying ideas.

Play as Preparation for Music Lessons

LEARNING thru play is the new order in the child world, and with the toy band, the rhythm game, the instrumental story, and mimetic play, music is proving the merits of the system. Thru such preparation the child goes to his first serious music lesson with his voice trained to follow the flow of simple melodies, his body trained to move to simple rhythms, his ears trained to discriminate between lengths and accents of tones, his mind trained to remember little tunes, his senses keen to catch contrasting phrases, and his imagination stimulated to find meanings in musical sentences.

Christmas Cards

Garden Magicians and Clowns

YOU might not think of your garden as a gymnasium or a circus ring, but expert climbers often exercise there and practice marvelous feats of daring all summer long.

He Has Given Away 50,000 Plants

PICTURE if you can a little seashore town built among the sand dunes, with here and there a gnarled pine struggling for existence. Most of the houses in it are absolutely without lawns or flowers, no matter how beautifully built and furnished. The town grows larger and straggles out in all directions, but it lacks something-- it lacks Nature, green lawns, the trees, flowers and the shrubbery that make a home out of a house.

The Time-Teller of the Ages

SINCE first a creeping shadow roughly divided the day into a few parts for a race of men to whom hours, minutes, or seconds represented neither necessity nor convenience, time-telling by the sun has held a fascination that is denied its mechanical and less romantic successors.

A Bungalow With Colonial Charm

THE lover of the colonial type of home, even tho he may require but five rooms for his family, may gratify his longings by studying some of the characteristic features of this type, such as the exposed chimney, the shutters and the porches.

HOMES of Wood ARE TYPICALLY AMERICAN

DO you realize that four-fifths of all the homes in America are lumber built? That homes of wood are an American tradition... an inherent part of our national architecture?

A Lamp Shade in the Mode

IN THESE days of futuristic designs a lamp shade must be in the mode, too. We like to have a variety of shades, and they must be purchased with what I save, so it is usually necessary to evolve them from the materials at hand.

We Win the Annual Battle With Jack Frost

JACK FROST is a sly visitor. He enters our gardens when we least want him. We may resent the visits of cows, horses, and chickens until we realize that they have paid us the delicate compliment of choosing our fine products in preference to those of our neighbors! We may even forgive the bugs that feed on our foliage, flowers, and fruit. These creatures-- quadruped and hexapod-- all eat to maintain their individual existences just as we do, and they make good use of what they get-- if we may judge by their greediness.

And now-- Child-study Courses for Mothers' Clubs

SINCE the very beginning of Better Homes and Gardens, child-study courses have been suggested in the articles and in the leaflets which we have published. In recent months, however, the requests for study courses have been so numerous that we have asked Gladys Denny Shultz, writer of our articles on child care and training, to design three such courses that may be used by mothers' clubs as a basis for study and discussion.

Come to the Garden Clinic

I HAVE just bought a new home, and in the yard there are a large number of very tall, overgrown shrubs. Is it possible to move these to other positions in the yard? Illinois.

Tools for the Home Workshop

BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS' Toolcraft editor advocates a workbench, tools, and motor-driven home-workshop machines with which dad, the boys, and even mother, can make repairs, sharpen shears and knives as well as build useful projects for the home.

Tips for the Handy Man

A GOOD solution for cleaning the automobile radiator can be made by dissolving a package of baking soda (or about two cupfuls) in a filling of hot water. Pour the solution in the radiator, run the car for 3 or 4 minutes, and then drain the radiator, flushing it well with clean water.

The Children's Pleasure Chest

After you receive this issue of Better Homes and Gardens, you are all going to get your birds ready to send in to be judged. Read the following paragraphs carefully, for they tell just exactly how to go about it:

Favorite Feathered Friends

This is the last bird for you to color. For full information, turn to page 114 of this issue and read carefully the directions for getting your birds and your bird story ready to send in.-- L. R.

ACROSS The EDITOR'S DESK

IT IS always a pleasure to chat with the readers of Better Homes and Gardens, even tho I have to do a great deal of it by way of correspondence and the printed page. A great deal of inspiration and encouragement comes from what you say. Your letters are so overflowing with goodwill that I actually feel as tho we were talking face to face.