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Read ArticleAlong the Garden Path
JULY is the month when the flowers blaze in color. Heat opens them rapidly, bees and insects fertilize them, seeds develop. It is at night or early in the morning that the garden is at its best. Cut your flowers with long stems in the morning or at night.
Read ArticleThe Roving Gardener
SUMMER sun beats mercilessly down on city pavements. Shops, stores, and offices are insufferably hot and stifling. There is smoke, sweat, grime, and my mind is distracted.
Read ArticleThe Garden Celebrates Independence
WHAT is meant by the Great American Gardened Home, and who dictates its style-- the landscape architect for the home gardener? There are some who think that the gardens of America are direct importations from Europe. Some strange critics believe that the landscape architect has perversely disregarded the wishes of common folks.
Read Article"I Recommend Housework"
"WHAT we sometimes consider burdens, drudgery, and the like are often blessings in disguise," said Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink, as we sat, one afternoon, in her California home.
Read ArticleFirst Steps in Rock Gardening
THE rock garden is the youngest garden child of the American home owner. It is a fascinating phase of gardening, and it is not surprising that it satisfies the needs of even conservative persons who are looking for something new and different.
Read ArticleTwo Lovely Modern Gardened Homes Designed True to American Tradition
EARLY American and Colonial architecture appear to be taking possession of our countryside as never before since the days when our first houses opened hospitable doors to the courageous men who built them. Such houses are so inherently suited to much of our landscape that they appear to grow out of the soil, with the effortless beauty of the tall oaks and elms or gnarled apple trees that sometimes shade them.
Read ArticleThe Pool, the Jewel of the Garden
"HOW about a treasure hunt for garden jewels, Junior Gardeners?" asks our Landscape Architect guide.
Read ArticleThe Bicycle Club's July Jamboree
"A PARTY on a day like this. Can you bear it?" were Janet's words as I met her at the corner on our way to Ruth's. For Ruth was giving the Bicycle Club its annual July Jamboree, and the weather appeared to be out-doing itself when it came to producing heat to celebrate the occasion.
Read ArticlePlanting for Both Beauty and Use
UTILIZING what you have is sort of a hobby of mine, and I am glad to spread the gospel. It always seems to me that most of us have a real abundance of things if only we would practice true thrift. Why should a poor man buy a building lot, load himself up with heavy costs to ornament it, and then pay heavier taxes to keep it, when proper planting in the first place and a little labor afterward would help to ease his burden?
Read ArticleFitting Your Child for a Happy Life
PLEASURE and success in the task, satisfactory relations with our fellowmen, happiness in the love life --these are the three great fundamentals of mental health. And of these, many think that the love life is the greatest.
Read ArticleCompactly and Snugly Designed
THERE are many points about this home that make it individualistic and give it especial charm of its own. Its small size connotes a friendliness not to be found in large houses, an intimacy and informality that make it the very essence of home. There may also be delightful completeness, for the small home is not lacking in detail of design or plan nor does it lack modern conveniences and the up-to-date touches that make home life so enjoyable today.
Read ArticleThe Fascinating Art of Crossing Flowers
THERE is something fascinating about the breeding of plants. No wonder that some persons who have not understood have called it creating new flowers. Really, however, the breeding of plants is like carrying out a cook's recipe except that one never knows how the ingredients are going to combine.
Read ArticleThe Fun of Front-Porch Travel
WHERE shall we go this month: to Iceland or Java, to British Columbia or some quiet hamlet in Brittany? Everyone of us longs for a real vacation and everyone of us may have it.
Read ArticleGood Food From a World-famous French Restaurant
AT THE age of thirteen, on the thirteenth day of the month, with but thirteen francs in his pocket, a little French boy landed in New York City, a boy who some forty years later, as an American citizen, was to offer the $25,000 prize for the first airplane crossing between America and France, the winning of which made Charles Augustus Lindbergh the hero of the world.
Read ArticlePlanning the Home
MANY of the homes of our grandmothers' day seemed to have been planned solely for the comfort and happiness of elderly people; there was little in them to express the joy and exuberance of youth. Heavy, pompous furniture, draperies that smothered the sunlight, carpeted floors that harbored dust for crawling pinafores, and a general young- people- must- be- seen- and-not-heard atmosphere hung around them like a pall.
Read ArticleJuly Notes From a Gardener's Scrapbook
PEATMOSS or well-rotted manure makes an ideal mulch for the perennial border, the annual flower beds, or the newly planted shrub border. A layer ½ to 1 inch thick makes the beds look neater without the labor of cultivation after every rain.
Read ArticleThe Hoes or Hose--Which?
IF WE are to have good lawns, luscious vegetables, and good flowers in abundance, we must have an adequate supply of moisture in the soil. This we may insure in several ways, some of which require the installation of no equipment. For instance, we may develop a reservoir full of water by digging or plowing in autumn and leaving the furrows or the clods rough during winter so that water will flow into the soil, instead of over and off the surface.
Read ArticleAids to Better Picnicking
PICNIC time and camping time demand aids to better picnicking and camping, and here they are.
Read ArticleDoes It Really Pay to Can?
DO YOU remember a time, and that not so long ago, when the question "Does it really pay to can?" might have been accounted little less than culinary blasphemy? In the hangover of conservation enthusiasm which followed the war, something of housewifely virtue seemed to have remained inextricably mixed up with the process of filling the jars.
Read ArticleA Man Explores the Mysteries and Problems of Canned Foods
WHEN I was a boy I lived near a family whose daily sustenance came out of tin cans and glass bottles fresh from the grocery shelf. The principal cooking utensil in that household was a can-opener, and next in importance was the corkscrew. The sideboard in the dining-room had several stout shelves in its capacious lower story.
Read ArticleOrganize a Bird Club
FIVE o'clock of a crisp July morning is an excellent hour for the initial meeting of the bird club. Formal rules and parliamentary law play little part in its affairs, tho the leader of the "bird walk" may wish to jot down names as members of all ages stride from various directions to assemble on a set of friendly neighborhood front steps.
Read ArticleThe Children's Pleasure Chest
LIKE the spirit of Santa Claus at Christmastime or one's school work during the whole of the winter, in July a Pleasure Chestful of Fun is the ruler. Boys and girls are its princes and princesses, and its kingdom is All- Outdoors!
Read ArticleParty Cup Cakes
PRINCESS MARY LOUISE had a garden party last week, and she made little cup cakes for refreshments. They were topped with a white icing on which was written the guests' initials with pink icing. When the basket of cakelets was passed, Tommy had to look about for one marked with a "T." Doris searched for a pink "D."
Read ArticleACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK
"THE work of home improvement never can be finished, for the problems of homemaking always will be with us, and new conditions will alter them." These are the words of President Hoover, who has given the subject of American home life a great deal of intelligent and sympathetic thought.
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