April 1932

ALONG THE GARDEN PATH

SURE it's spring! Even if it wasn't spring yesterday it will be tomorrow. For some time you and I have had this month marked on the calendar. Oh, the things we want to do! How small this page looks this month!

The Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener

APRIL 1. This may have been April Fool's Day to some, but to me it was more like Christmas, for the express agent phoned that there was a box for me.

The Eager Wonder of a Child

I ONCE knew a 5-year-old girl who loved a gentle milch-cow. I came upon the child on a bright May day in a pasture where she had gone to be with her friend.

WINNERS of the More Beautiful America Contest

THE Topeka, Kansas, Horticultural Society, with its Reinisch Rose Gardens and Rose Test Gardens, has won the $1,000 first prize offered by Better Homes and Gardens, in its More Beautiful America Contest, to the community which made the greatest permanent civic improvement during the contest period, from March 15, 1930, to October 1, 1931.

TIGRIDIA--The Garden Gypsy

FOR more than a century this flower has been masquerading under various and sundry aliases, such as shell-lily, leopardflower, and Mexican Tiger-iris, but now mythology discloses her as the captive spirit of an Aztec sun-dancer. She is Senorita Tigridia pavonia grandiflora!

The Working Surfaces in Your Kitchen

HOW kitchen working surfaces have changed since Grandmother was a girl-- yes, and since Grandmother's granddaughter was a girl, too. Then the kitchen table and the one off which the family dined were just about the only working surfaces in the kitchen.

A Perfect Little Home

A HOME called "Maywood" and situated on Sunset Road must suggest a charming picture to anyone with an atom of imagination, and, in actuality, it lives up to all expectations, as you can see.

How and Where to Keep Your Clothes

CONVENIENT hanging and orderly storage of wearing apparel is an important part in the planning of the modern home. Whether it be an already built home or one being built, the closet and cupboard space seems to be among the most important problems in the mind of the homemaker.

A Dirt Garden or a Fan's Garden?

GARDEN plans and schemes are innumerable and their development is most intriguing. Successful planning calls for vision and foresight. The beginner may not see all the latent possibilities in his garden, but as his experience grows, changes and improvements may be made.

A Plan for a Real Dirt Garden

TO ME the loveliest flowers of all are those good old garden friends which peep at us gayly from every grower's catalog, and these are the ones I have chosen to fill the garden of a real dirt gardener.

How to Place Shrubs

PLANTING A AND B: Plant Arrangement: In planting shrubbery beds one of the most common mistakes is to place the shrubbery in regular rows, one plant behind another, and lined up with each other from the side.

So You're Going to Move!

WELL-ORDERED families do not often change residences, but I feel sure that fully 60 percent of us, sometime in our lives, build a new home and hence are faced with Moving Day. Now, contrary to popular notion, this occasion can be one of almost peaceful calm for the whole family if plans are laid well in advance of the date and they are the right kind of plans.

A Home of Dreams Comes True

WE PRESENT this month another small home which blends perfectly the essential elements of a fine design; it has beauty of line, a wellbalanced use of exterior materials, and a sound and practical interior arrangement.

The Cost to Build This Home

A TWO-CENT stamp, for postage and handling, will bring you a complete list of materials required to build this home, with the exact quantities of each item. This list, carefully prepared by experts, is a part of Better Homes and Gardens' BILDCOST HOME PLAN.

Fruit Trees for Pacific Coast Gardens

I GROW real fruit trees on my home grounds, trees that produce, that give material returns on investment and labor. I am less interested in the ornamental flowering fruit trees that are so commonly used.

Poems and Songbooks

ONE of the delightful, vivid women who glows still in my memory as I look back to little girl days is that harried mother of six, who, taking her reading on the run, as it were, had improvised bulletin boards scattered over her home.

News of the New Wall-Coverings

IN WALLCOVERINGS as well as home furnishings there are changing style trends, not so marked perhaps in the wall-coverings, but each season seems to develop last season's theme a little differently and new additions creep into our consciousness almost without our realizing it.

What You Can Plant in the Shade

WHAT is shade? There is the shade found on the north side of the house where the spot is open to the sky, and there is the shade beneath dense trees where the soil is dry because the trees' roots are shallow.

Rugs for Special Places

NOTHING in the lived-in-all-winter home is more stimulating to the family at this time of year than fresh curtains at the windows, a wall-hanging for a bare space, or a gay little rug for some doorway-- and here we offer rugs you can make!

Sunproof Draperies for Summer Rooms

THE MAN-MADE WOODLAND PATH

If You Would Plant a Woodland Path

TO ME one of the most interesting of all forms of gardening is the planning and development of a woodland path. A section of the garden which is shaded by the growth of trees presents a very different problem from that of the usual open, sunny area, and its planting calls for careful thought and study.

What Good Is a TREE?

HOW many uses for the apple tree can you discover in the picture? An apartment house for the robin, a dressing room for the butterfly, a concert hall for the katydids, and-- what else can you find? There are many other uses not shown in the picture.

Now Consider the Garden Mr. Handy Man

ENTRANCE gates, lattices, and trellises belong in almost every garden, but there are so many types and possible variations that I hardly know just which form of entrance gate, for instance, will best serve all of us. Possibly the most usable is the entrance arch, which is adaptable to any back yard.

Gourds for Use and Ornament

HARK back to the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt, about 2400 B. C., if you would learn about the earliest uses of the garden gourd, one of our oldest cultivated plants. In those early times the Lagenaria Gourd was used extensively as a water flask and for general household-container purposes. Our modern expeditioners who invade the Far East in quest of buried scientific treasure often report finding these gourds in the early egyptian tombs.

The Private Life of a Clothes Moth

ONE fine evening a young clothes moth (Tinea pellionella) split her cocoon and stood shaking her wings as they became dry and firm. She was rather good to look at-- small, dainty, and of a handsome buff color. She walked around slowly, creeping away from the light and seeking a dark corner and a mate.

New Ideas for Your Yearbook

BEFORE me lies a folder overflowing with yearbooks sent to me by clubs everywhere. Yearbooks from large cities and from small towns mingle with those from rural communities and suburban settlements.

How Children Garden in the Big City

ATOP the Empire State Building I can hear you say, as you would if you were here with me and looked down on the never-ending and ever-darkening canyons, "How can New York children ever be trained in school gardens?"

Scuffs, Scratches, Blemishes--OUT THEY COME, THIS WAY

ACCIDENTS happen in the best of families. In spite of everything we do set hot dishes on dining-room tables, dig rocking chairs into the baseboard, spill perfume on the dresser, and the children will kick and scuff things in their play.

WHEN A WOMAN SHOPS

THE newest improvement in curtain rods and pulleys for drawing window curtains and draperies is to inclose all the mechanism within a rod, which does away with sagging cords and leaves nothing to get out of order.

Our Baby-Health Service

A Recipe Contest

BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS' Foods Editor would like to know, and so she invites you to send your favorites-- salad, dessert, or "main dish," or all three --thereby getting your name in the pot to win one of the prizes, perhaps, in our Frozen Dishes Contest.

The Children's Pleasure Chest

"CHEERIO-- Cheerio," said Mrs. Robin Red Breast from the top bough of an apple-green tree. "Everyone come see my babies, three of them, and the hungriest little rascals!" Then she pounced down on a big bug and bore him proudly away to her snugly woven nest under the eaves of the garage back of Neighborly House.

ACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK

ILLUSTRATED lectures designed by Better Homes and Gardens have always attracted a great deal of favorable attention, so I am sure many of you will be glad to know that we now have ready a new one, "Let's Build a Rock Garden and Pool." In these days, when gardening with rocks and water is becoming so popular, this lecture will be in demand among garden clubs.