April 1930

ALONG the GARDEN PATH

APRIL awakens the flowers from the soil, but it also opens the windows of our homes and our better instincts. Strangely constructed is he who can go thru springtime without the urge to plant something. To sow a seed and raise it to its flower, to plant a thorny rose and perfect a bud upon a long stem, to divide a perennial and actually produce a dozen plants from it-- what a privilege to take part in this creation!

The Roving Gardener

APRIL is or should be the busiest garden month of all the year in sections most of the country. More depends upon the work done this month than in any other, for this is the time to get the jump on things and make ready for the season ahead.

Are You Fit to Be an Ancestor?

MARRIAGE is too human a thing to be taken into the laboratory and put under the microscope and analyzed as tho it were a frog's leg or a piece of steel, instead of being, as it is, a matter of sentiment, of passion, beauty, tenderness, and romance beyond the power of any cold-blooded scientist to perceive.

Nature Teaches Color Harmony

I BELIEVE in simple color schemes, but as we progress in garden knowledge our combinations may be more daring or more subtle.

A Garden of Blue and Gold

A GARDEN of blue and gold! Can't you see it sparkling and scintillating in the sunlight? A garden that is lovely tinseled with the dew of early morning, and in the hot, sleepy stillness of a summer noon, regally drooping as it emits a spicy, stirring perfume, and in the evening, the gorgeous, wideawake faces nodding and beckoning in the reawakened breeze!

Tell Me, When Will My Flowers Come Up?

WHEN will the seedlings be poking their noses above the ground so that I can have some satisfaction from the weeks of planning, watching, and waiting?

How One Family Did Over an Eighteenth-Century House

WHEN the first part of this old farmhouse, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Cecil Peery, Jr., at Malvern, Pennsylvania, was built in 1714, the front door faced a road that was scarcely more than a trail between the Delaware River villages of the Lenni Lenape and the camps of the Susquehan-nocks along a wide, shallow river that still bears their name.

A Gardened Home on a Hillside

A BUFF-COLORED stucco house reared itself stiffly atop a limestone cliff overlooking the Iowa River. That was but five years ago; today that same house is the center of a woodland fairyland created by the patient, capable hands of Mrs. Arthur Steindler, wife of Dr. Arthur Steindler, of Iowa City, Iowa, head of the children's hospital at the University of Iowa and a world-famous authority on orthopedics.

Paths That Welcome You In

THERE are all sorts of adventurous ways in-- each the individual problem and pleasure of the home-maker, and the delight of the visitor. But tradition in walks is passing rapidly. They are no longer standardized as they once were. The time-honored but homely practice of plain cement, straightly directed at the house door, cold lawn on either side these unlovely conventions are becoming extinct or modified for the reason that tho their utility and economy are beyond question, yet beauty has its voice to raise, too.

Will the Birds Make Their Homes Near Yours This Spring?

ALL that the birds are looking for when they visit your grounds in the spring is a place to nest and rear their young in comfort and security. A fancy house is often worse than the nest they would otherwise build.

A House in the Norman Style

WE ALL want dignity and charm in our houses, but more often than not we lose one in our search for the other. Here is a house in which dignity and charm are blended to an almost perfect degree with its plain, unor-namented walls rising to simple rooflines which, in turn, build up and up and finally terminate in the sturdy chimneys.

"But Peonies Did Well"

I DID not set out to be more interested in peonies than in any other plant, but were I to be asked how I came to spend my life studying them, I should have to think out loud and exclaim that we do not always arrive at the place we set out for. Horticulture was in my blood. My father was all his life an ardent plant- lover; and his children have followed the general direction in which his footsteps led.

Spring Prepares for Autumn Roses

PRUNING is essential to good roses, and failure with roses may often be traced to lack of or improper pruning. Pruning concentrates the plant's energy in fewer eyes, forcing it to grow more vigorous branches bearing better blooms.

You Make Your Own Music-Pictures

WHEN music makes a picture it is always a movie, for like time and tide, music waits for no man. The listener who traces a picture painted in tones or follows a story told in this rhythmic language must be keen of ear, alert of mind, and quick of imagination, for a music-picture, unlike an eye-cinema, can not be had ready-made for any ticket fee.

Front, Back, and All Around

FRONT yard, back yard-- all around the house-- that's exactly what we want to talk about this month. We know that the home grounds should be blocked out into three divisions: front yard, service area, and garden.

Junior Gardeners' Third Venture in Landscape Gardening

SEE where our landscape-architect guide has taken us today-- to a little informal garden, just the size for Junior Gardeners to enjoy.

Temperament-- Will It Make or Unmake Your Home?

MY DAUGHTER put down my last article with a sigh. "I suppose a homemaker can circumvent her weaknesses of character, as you say, provided she is smart enough to know what they are"

The Plain Facts About Life Insurance

THE next time I met my insurance man the strain had gone out of our relations, I left better toward him because he was no longer trying to make me be good, and he felt better toward me, I suppose because I was being reasonably good and promised to be better,

Another House Which Solves a Problem

THIS small house, like so many which have appeared in Better Homes and Gardens, is interesting because it is a "problem" house. By this is meant, in this case, that the family for which the house was designed wanted a combined living-room and dining-room with two bedrooms-- maximum room for the small family, you see, within a minimum-size house.

My Six Favorite Hardy Azaleas

I FEEL as tho I had been asked to choose my six friends and then publish them to the world as my first or sixth choice. I like all of the azaleas, but I cannot write about them all at this time. Life is made up of making choices of food, neckties, and pleasures; why not of azaleas? Here are my choices.

Acid-Soil Gardening Is Fascinating

IN RECENT years it has come to be recognized that certain species of plants, including some of the most highly prized ornamental shrubs, are favored by acids in the soil and injured or killed by alkaline materials, such as lime and manure. There has arisen, accordingly, a new type of horticulture, which may be termed, for short, acid-soil gardening.

Pure Soft Water for Every Home Use

MY NEIGHBORS two doors north of us-- that is, I should say, the young women in the family-- make, on an average, two trips to our house every month to get a pail of soft water with which to wash their hair. They can get soft water from another neighbor's cistern, which is closer, but they don't, and I can't say that I blame them, for the soft water that they get from us-- generated by our automatic water softener is not only as soft but better, because it is clean, sparkling, and pure.

Books That Men Folks Like

"HE ISN'T interesting!" I heard a small girl remark scornfully about a boy cousin of her own age. "AH he does is sit around and read books about airplanes!"

Fish Is Delicious Broiled or Baked

DISWASHING made easy, or how to avoid washing dishes, might just as well have been the title of this article, because when you use the pans and heat-proof platters and planks you actually do eliminate a lot of pots and pans and serving dishes.

Foods a Child of 1910 Didn't Eat

TWENTY years ago what brave doctor would have dared advocate milk and tomato juice for infants, or salmon souffle for the toddler? Obviously, foods for children have changed.

What You Can Do to Give Your Child the Right Start in Life

RESPONSIBILITY! Dependability! Two of the most important words in the English language so far as humans are concerned!

The Unexpected Guest

TODAY, in this age of fast and easy travel, it is almost imperative that the efficient homemaker keep a well-stocked pantry shelf containing foods that are easy to prepare on short notice. Many of us never know when a car of four or five may be motoring thru our town or city and stop to see us.

How to Combine Colors

IN THE whole province of interior decoration there is no subject more fascinating than the management of color. There is likewise no field more richly endowed with manifold possibilities. At the very outset of color study, however, it is well to sound a warning.

April Notes From a Gardener's Scrapbook

APRIL is the great awakening month in gardens of the North and the joyous month of bloom in the South, so wherever we are we should enjoy our garden to the full. Watch each new plant appear or each new flower unfurl its petals, but be busy, for it is the remodeling time, when we redecorate the garden, adding new fixtures, making new pictures, and developing new color schemes. What possibilities! Lets make the most of them.

The Bathroom Gets New Spring Things

WHY not? It's being done! The process of glorification seems in order, and in this new day even attics and basements become places of distinction Back yards boast their lily pools, their lattice arbors, or even flaunt a marble faun!

And This Is How Our Vegetable Garden Came About

REARED in an apartment, she had never had a vegetable garden. One day she said to me: ''Can we have a vegetable garden, with some potato bushes? In all my life I've never picked a potato fresh from the bushes"!

Town Dwellers in Arcady

BESIDES father and mother there were five children, ranging between 11 and 3 years old. Their home was in a university town of 20,000, and their father was a practicing physician.

Building and Other Questions Answered

OUR gas automatic water heater is about two room lengths from the bathroom. It also supplies the kitchen. In cold weather we have difficulty getting hot water. What might be the trouble?

Aids to Better Housekeeping

WHEN the modern mother goes chauffeuring she has no compunction about neglecting her youngsters; she takes Father to his business, does the family marketing, even drives for pleasure without having to call on Grandmother or a nursemaid for assistance unless she so desires. And never, never does she leave the baby to finish his nap while she dashes off, with her driving handicapped by wild thoughts of what may happen before she returns.

Jean and Ann Chambers' Playhouse

THIS attractive playhouse was built by Howard Chambers, of Genesee, Michigan. Mr. Chambers is a draftsman, of Flint, Michigan, but because of good roads and the automobile he is able to live at some distance from his work, where he has a half-acre lot.

How to Landscape the Norman-Style House

TO PERSONS uninitiated to the type of planting appropriate for the lovely Norman-style house on page 23, the following points of interest should be observed: Like those old homes in true Norman setting, this house in American setting has included both beauty and utility.

A Neighborhood Athletic Club Is Organized

"FINE gardening weather," remarked Mr. Radford to his neighbor Mr. Simms, who was taking advantage of the mild April twilight to do a little spading in his neat back yard.

Give the Sun a Chance

THE abundance of heat and light the sun gives us without cost may at certain times of the day and year be too great for either need or comfort of man, but by judicious ordering of his life and the wise building of his home he may either make the best use of the sun's rays or provide acceptable substitutes.

Our Friends the Martins

COLONIAL architecture is becoming popular, antique furniture is again in vogue, and our old-fashioned bird the Purple Martin is also becoming a necessary part of modern flower gardens. In fact, no garden is complete without its colony of martins circling over the hollyhocks, snapdragons, and petunias.

Wallpaper You Can Wash

NOW come washable wallpapers with all of the warm loveliness of wallpaper of the past but with this new added advantage. And it is an added advantage, to be sure, to be able to wash them. We not only can avoid those biennial nightmares incident to having soiled wallpaper removed and new paper put on, but we retain the background of our room, upon which our furnishing scheme was planned.

To Help You Dress Your Windows This Spring

A BOOKLET OF BRIDGE-LUNCHEON MENUS

"TABLE SETTINGS FOR EVERY OCCASION"

The Children's Pleasure Chest

BRER WINKLE was painting the last seven eggs when Wag called at his doorway to wish him Happy Easter. "Thank you, Little Pig," said the rabbit gentleman in a kindly voice. "Won't you come in and take a peep at the baskets? I do think they are the most beautiful we have had in years."

"Does Your Wife Know?"

"A HOME is a more contented, and so a better, place when the husband shares with the wife a knowledge of the family assets."

The Woman With a Hoe

THE most independent and self-sufficient person I ever knew is Mrs. Mary Allison, who lives in a small town in the Southwest. After she was left a widow she sold her large house, in which she had lived all her life, and built a small one out on the edge of town, where she owned several acres of ground.

Our Curtains "just Growed"

The Professor's Wife Raises Chickens

BY NATURE I am a farmer; by circumstances I am the wife of a college professor, the mother of six children, and doomed to domesticity in cities and suburbs. The Professor is not a farmer either by nature or circumstances, but I am glad he is not, because if he were one, at least by circumstances, I should then be what I do not in the least want to be a farmer's wife.