Better Homes & Gardens March 1930 Magazine

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ALONG the GARDEN PATH

MARCH proclaims that winter is over, but the seasoned gardener laughs at the boast. He likes to have March speak sweet words, but he knows that they are not true ones.

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The Roving Gardener

THERE is an old saying, "Life so short: the craft so long to learn," and somehow this comes to mind when March begins. For, before March is over, another garden season, with its many trials and problems, has begun for a good portion of the country.

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My Art and My Home Life

"I HAVE found that the united life of a happy home and the upbringing of children are in perfect harmony with an artistic career." This is the statement of Madame Louise Homer, world-famous contralto, who, not long ago, was elected, in a voting contest which extended thruout the country, as one of the twelve most famous women of America.

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The Plain Facts About Life Insurance

MY FIRST experience in buying life insurance taught me the important fact that there are many kinds of life insurance, which serve many kinds of need, and which may be bought for prices which differ almost as much as the cost of different styles of automobiles.

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What to Do When Spring Unlocks the Soil

WHEN the first day of spring comes, long before it says so on the calendar, in Cleveland I go poking about the garden to find what things may be stirring. We lift the brown straw to see if the sun has called the daffodils, and we are disappointed that the earth is still bare and shows no sign of green.

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My Rose--Dorothy Perkins--and Others

"YOU must be very proud to have such a lovely rose for your namesake," so many people have said to me. I am-- now. But the Dorothy Perkins Rose was named for me by my father when I was too young to know anything about it, and when I did grow old enough to be aware of the honor, I am afraid that it was more a source of annoyance than satisfaction to me.

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A House Plan for Any Locality

THERE is a charm, plus an atmosphere of romance and restfulness, about the small Spanish-style house pictured here that makes it particularly likable. Low and rambling in street appearance, it possesses a rather unusually broad frontage, 56 feet 6 inches in all, and hence offers quite exceptional opportunity for an interesting treatment of its grounds, which, it will be seen, has been most admirably realized.

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If It Is Beautiful It Must Be Livable

A PRACTICAL plan and a charming house go hand in hand almost inevitably. In this respect architecture differs from all other arts. Music is written to give pleasure to the ear, painting and sculpture to the eye, writing, as an art, be it poetry or prose, also appeals to our senses.

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All About the Sowing of Seeds

WHO can say that we have no modern miracles when into commonplace boxes, holding what appears to be black and lifeless soil, we drop the little golden grains of pansy seed, the rough dry husks of single dahlias, or the papery discs of lilies, and with our own eyes see the wonders of their growth?

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We Build a Garden Pool

SOME primitive instinct seems to give all of us a desire to be near the water. Any body of water has a certain beauty. Apparently we all respond to water, whether it is quiet or splashing.

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Books About Doing and Making

WHEN spring comes round again, poets, youths, and maidens may cherish vague and sentimental fancies, but most good householders, male and female, begin to think joyfully and definitely about things to do and things to make. They wake from their long winter lethargy with a distinct yearning to improve their houses, their gardens, their back fences, their children, and themselves.

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The Flowers Star in the Movies

"MARY, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?"

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Fixtures to Fit the Home

WHAT about the lighting fixtures? This is usually the cry just before the last coat of paint is put on the woodwork of the new home. It is too bad that this is so often true, for at that time most of us feel that our purse is about empty: we have had the little luxuries built into some part of our house, and now this last important item is slighted to the point where fixtures are almost a source of dissatisfaction and discord in our decorative scheme.

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What You Buy When You Buy

A VERY much excited friend came in a few days ago with the hairraising story that his house was coming to pieces, and would I please go over and tell him what to do about it. I went, and learned on the way that a great crack had appeared on the wall of his living-room: did that mean that all of the plaster was coming off?

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Choosing the Best of the Roses

THE word everblooming applied to roses is not altogether correct, as most varieties, with few exceptions, take a rest after each crop; they seem to be fatigued, as if a great effort had been required to put forth their blooms. They are also called monthly roses, a name which includes the Teas, Hybrid Teas, and Pernetianas.

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Let's Block Out the Garden

IT IS the assembling of earth, plants, bricks, and other materials that makes a garden, not the materials themselves.

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A Satisfactory Room for a Girl

EVERY girl should have her own room. Its particular size is of small importance; a small cubicle tucked away at the end of the hall or under the eaves will afford the same intimate retreat, provide the same opportunity for self-expression, and reflect the personality of the occupant equally as well as a large one.

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The Right Pictures for Y our Home and You

A LOVE of things interesting and beautiful-- and everyone has that!-- is an adequate guide in selecting a picture. When it conies to buying a hat or frock, a piece of furniture or a rug, a woman sets about to purchase with a sense of confidence in her own good taste, a feeling of freedom to exercise her individuality.

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We Discuss What Well-Dressed Windows Will Wear

ONE of the most important features in the home furnished in good taste, whether large or small, is the curtain treatment of its windows. Probably there is no one factor in the decoration of any room that so helps to establish its character.

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Violas--Favorites For All Gardens

VIOLAS are by no means new flowers. In northern New England as well as in the Northwest, Violas have long been grown to a more or less limited extent, mainly from seed. In the United States, however, it is only within recent years that they have become popular.

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Home and Garden Hints From the South

THE homemaker and garden-lover from the North, West, or East may learn a great many things of practical value by traveling in the South. It would take a resident Southern writer to give a detailed and accurate description of these things, however, and the following observations will necessarily be only a few highlights, as seen from an amateur angle, and in a perspective of time and space.

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AMONG OURSELVE

WE HAVE some houses for bluebirds and wrens, and we always watch the birds move in, early in the spring. Last year the bluebirds began house-hunting in February. They need human assistance to keep the English Sparrows out of their homes, so I keep an old fork handy and each night use it to pull out what the sparrows have carried in during the day.

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Early American in Wood and Stone

TO THOSE who like the Puritan simplicity of the Colonial, this home should have particular appeal. It might well accompany any of those quiet, serene little dwellings "down East." It demonstrates how closely the human quality is linked in all forms of provincial architecture, for the pioneer home was the perfect architectural expression of a home-loving people.

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Planning the Back-Yard Garden

MY JUNIOR Gardeners are having such a delightful time in the Kingdom of the Landscape Architect that I have decided to invite all the boys and girls of America to join them in this interesting adventure of gardenmaking. If you cannot find a counselor or enough friends to form a club at this time, you may send in your name and become a member.

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The Homely Baked Bean Comes Back

A REVIVAL is on in Saturday-night suppers. Baked beans are coming back. The oldtime, faithful accompaniment, brown bread, is with them. When it was found that copper is a valuable constituent of foods, dried beans, which are indeed a rich source of it, came to the foreground.

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Preserves You Can Make Now

DURING those early spring days that really do not yet belong to spring nor quite to winter, the cupboard shelves are likely to find themselves almost bare of the favorite spreads. It was for just these days that I started my winter-conserve cookbook. Several recipes from it are published here.

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Fitting the Child for His Task

WITH this month's discussion begins a real adventure-- for the writer, at least. For with it we leave the safe, well-charted shores and plunge into the great unknown in child training.

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When Is an Oven Overcrowded?

HAVE you ever wondered how much you can bake in your oven at one time with good results? Have you ever wondered how much extra gas you use when you do nut several things in the oven at one time?

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Hot Breads Crisp and Fragrant

HOT bread crisp and fragrant from the, oven, popped onto the table at that strategic moment when the members of the family are hungry and expectant; yellow butter melting over delectable morsels that disappear with the speed of the proverbial hotcakes!

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"My 2-Year-Old Got on My Nerves"

I AM a young mother with my first baby, a boy now 2 years old. Some months ago the complex problem of doing my own housework and caring for my child began "to get on my nerves." Something had to be done, for the boy's happiness and my own composure were rapidly becoming a matter of family history.

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Aids to Better Housekeeping

ADEQUATE ventilation, always a problem, is especially so during the winter months. One member of the family wants many windows open, another thinks that a house should be shut up as closely as possible from November to April.

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Garden How-to-Do

MARCH is the month when for most of us our garden is just awakening. We are checking up on the ravages of winter, making up our lists of the replacement plants, and completing our plans for the year's garden program.

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Building and Other Questions Answered

Yes, there is always a best way. For instance, in placing studs in the framing of a house there are several methods in vogue, but there seems to us but one best way: with the studs resting squarely upon the sill and spiked to the joist. It is altogether likely that an early conference of building-material manufacturers will set best-methods standards for placing each material.

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Quilts--We Never Have Too Many

SOMETHING useful, something beautiful or fittingly clever when finished, should of course be the aim of every woman who enjoys doing handwork. This month, therefore, we proudly offer two lovely quilts of new design. Do you prefer to piece or applique? One is done each way.

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HELEN COWLES LECRON

CAN you make a good speech? When you are assigned a subject on which to talk for half an hour before your club, can you do it naturally and effectively, without nervousness and without too many notes on which to lean? When, during a club discussion, a question arises on a subject which you know something about, and your opinion is suddenly asked, can you rise to your feet and express yourself vigorously and definitely?

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Cooks' Round Table

Cook the halibut in one piece with onion sliced over it, in boiling salted water for 20 minutes. Cool. (This may be done hours before.) Grease a baking dish and put a layer of the flaked halibut in the bottom. Beat the 3 eggs well and fold them into the white sauce. Place a layer of this over the halibut.

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The Children's Pleasure Chest

IT WAS March-- cold, blustery old March, hop-scotching up the hill with icicles hanging in his whiskers and a nose still red as a Christmas berry. Wag, the little pink pig, had stayed indoors all morning by the fire, working over a gay kite man, and now he was almost finished.

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We Carve, Collect, Hike, Stew; Isn't the World Full of Things to Do?

WE HAVE made a club of eight boys. We go on hikes, to study birds, nests, and other things. I think it would be fine for other boys to do this. One Sunday morning at 10:30, Theron Welsh, George Ryan, Clifford Blecha, and I left for Goose Serines. We were there by 12 o'clock.

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ACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK

FROM the letters you have sent to us: "In the near future won't you print an article on the growing of roses?"-- R. C. Doan, New York. The same week this letter was received we published the January number, which contained the first article in a series on roses. Now, isn't that service?

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