May 1935

Across the Editor's Desk

A DRAMATIC contrast between the drive of modern urban life and the tranquillity of home is found in the above picture. The house is in the very heart of New York, on Park Avenue near 38th Street, and is what is known as "America's Little House." Skyscrapers tower to the clouds and the intense power of metropolitan life surges past, but here nestles a quiet gardened home, to remind men looking from a thousand office windows that there is a real revival of home-loving.

Muskogee, Oklahoma, Wins More Beautiful America Contest $1,000 Sweepstakes Prize

IT'S news TO ME!

AT MY May-morning breakfast fragrant garden blossoms will garnish the card tables set for four, and our first course is to be pineapple juice-- chipped ice cubes tinkling, and a whole hulled strawberry in each glass! The ice-chipping, that's easy for (as you see in the sketch) Nick recently discovered a new widget. It's a 4-prong chipper with a spring, chips the ice cube in the glass (and not the glass!).

THE Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener

may 1 Annuals. First, I finished sowing my annual seeds outdoors and dog-gone it, I had more seeds than I had space in the bed. I watered the annual seedlings in the coldframe and then transplanted the rest of my vegetable seedlings from the electric hotbed to the old coldframe.

The Flower Lady of the Middlewest answers the Questions You Ask

FLOWER-LOVING men and women speak a universal language. Sensing a kinship, the foreign-born ones bring me the flower lore of their native lands, and seek my aid in finding for them flowers for which they long but do not know by the English names-- the forget-me-nots of Sweden, the harebells of France, and the edelweiss of Switzerland.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE IN-LAWS?

BACK in 1931 when Stan lost his job, Ruth, comforting him, said: "I never have believed all this bunk about the mother-in-law menace anyway. Your mother and I are both civilized gentlewomen. And I'm genuinely fond of her-- she's been so heavenly kind to me.

a Ring on that certain finger

THE girl with the gray eyes looks at herself in the morning paper and reads, "Mr. and Mrs. John Timothy Rhoads announce the engagement of their daughter..."

How Kathleen Got A Good Paint Job

A FEW months ago in Better Homes & Gardens I told the story of how my friend Kathleen and her husband, Doctor Bill, found a lovely old house on the edge of town, and their adventures in making its well-proportioned rooms fresh and charming.

A FENCE GIVES YOU LITTLE WORLD APART

Let Your Child Draw DON'T TEACH HIM

STEPHEN clambered up on his father's desk, dug out a pencil, and set to work on the newly hung wallpaper. He knew, of course, that he shouldn't-- but that morning he had seen a baby calf, and he just had to make its picture.

MORE WINNERS in the More Beautiful America Contest

IF YOU could sit with us and review the results in our second More Beautiful America Contest you would be as enthusiastic as we over them. Every entry won--perhaps not a bronze plaque or a handsomely engraved certificate. These are minor. The important thing is that hundreds of cities and towns in the United States are holding their heads higher--ready to welcome visitors more, heartily than ever before.

Sure, You Can Raise Delphiniums

LAST fall I gave Bill six of my choicest delphinium seedlings-- plants I had nursed along all spring and thru the hot summer. One day he came over. "I'm off delphiniums," he said. "Your plants all froze out and the seeds I sowed didn't grow."

A Parade of Iris --Long and Colorful

E. A. BOWLES, in one of his charming gardening bocks, begins one chapter thus: "Suppose a wicked uncle, who wished to put an end to your gardening zeal, left you pots and pots of money, on condition that you grow only one kind of plants; which one would you choose?"

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Perhaps the biggest objection to a house on a 50-foot lot is that you must spend so much time yanking the window shades up and down...

Desks FROM Chests

THE Basement Steps Out

THE basement has always been my hobby. I don't like cellars. The word suggests dampness and disorder to me. I like clean, orderly, and colorful basements.

Shirts THE WAY FATHER LIKES THEM

WHEN your husband takes the shirt off his back for you, do you return it to him immaculately clean and smartly ironed?

Just What the Doctor Ordered

HARRY BENSON, my neighbor, would have kept right on with his mashed potatoes and cream gravy and would never have faced his fatness if he hadn't happened to have felt dizzy and seen spots in front of his eves one morning at the office.

Three new Ways to Re-do Your Bathroom

How to Prevent the Mosquito Nuisance This Summer

THE pests are not an inevitable drawback of summertime. With a little care, especially if you have coöperative neighbors, you can be fairly free from mosquitoes.

BE SURE IT'S A WEED

A PLANT that grows lavishly and persistently where one wishes something else to grow seems to be a practical definition of a weed. It is difficult to attach the noxious label to any specific flowering plant, as plants which are carefully cultivated and nurtured in herbaceous borders in one part of the United States may be regarded as weeds in another section, and scorned as such.

Parents' Methods

JANE was accused of eating some candy. She said she hadn't. But Mother was sure the candy was there in the morning, and at night it was gone.

Modernize Your Oak Furniture

All cabinet woods have periods of popularity. Sometimes walnut is the most favored wood, sometimes oak, sometimes maple, sometimes mahogany. Twenty to fifty years ago oak was the popular and most favored wood and much of it was put into service.

MY MOTHER NEVER RAISED HER VOICE

THE program at the child-study group was over, and the mothers present had relaxed into confessional mood.

TODAY and YESTERDAY

Chips APPRAISES Tools

OLD CHIPS, the ship's carpenter, paused a moment and regarded the keen edge of the chisel with which he was carefully squaring a hole. "Tools are a sight better now than they were when I learned my trade back on Cape Cod," he observed.

$200 Cash For Visiting With Your Friends and Neighbors

WHEN visiting your friends and neighbors who are home-owners or who live in detached houses, tell them about Better Homes & Gardens-- what a fine homemaking influence it is. Tell them about this wonderful May issue and that they can get it at the nearest news stand for only 10 cents, or by subscription for only $1 a year.

Confessions of a Good Cook

Having troubles with naughty meat loaves which fall to pieces when cut? There's a way to cure them of such tricks. Simply have the crackers or dry bread crumbs ground or rolled fine, then mix them thoroly with the meat. Or sometimes the fault lies in dryness. Take a tip and always stir in some sort of fatty meat with the mixture.

Have You the "Angel Cake Touch"?

ANGEL FRUIT CAKE is really more than a novelty. It's a fruit cake which ruins no adolescent dispositions. It's grand served in thin slices with tea.

Just Toast

WHETHER it's crisp dry toast, cinnamon toast, nutmeg toast, brown bread toast, poached egg on toast, or rich golden French toast, there's no denying that this national breakfast favorite is like the little girl with the curl: when it's good, it's very, very good, but when it's bad, it's very, very bad!

THIS IS THE WAY WE Transplant

I'VE HEARD it said that beginner's luck usually runs high. It certainly has for me. I have so many plants I don't know what to do. I'll have to give some to my neighbors, for there's no room for them all in my garden unless I plow up my remaining bit of lawn.

Things to See on a Hike

"WE OUGHT to have brought something to eat," the Doctor halfway upbraided me, because I told him before we left that morning that we would find plenty to eat in any woods at that time of the year.

Easy Upkeep / vs FLOOR DRUDGERY

WHAT President Roosevelt Thinks of Advertising

AS THE Governor of New York, Mr. Roosevelt, on June 18, 1931, made a speech before the convention of the Advertising Federation of America, in which he said:

Bitter Absence

WHEN King Mausolus left home one morning it was supposed that he had gone to the daily counsel, but when he did not return for the evening repast his Queen Artemis was exceedingly concerned. She sent messengers thru Halicarnassus that he might be located. When the messengers had searched the public places they returned to report that their search was in vain.

We Create a Home

THIS is a story of how Paul Davies, of Canfield, Ohio, acquired a unique and very delightful Early American home for himself and his family as a result of an attempt originally to convert an idle property into an income-producer.

THE VIVACIOUS Poppy Anemone

PETITE and as vivacious as sparkling-eyed maids of auld Ireland is the little known Poppy, or St. Brigid, Anemone, most prolific of all bulbous plants, not only in delightful range of color and form, but by way of lusty hardiness and long continued flowering season.

Garden Tips

"PLEASE tell me the secret of having large dahlias," is the question many of you are always asking. The secret, of course, is having large-flower varieties to begin with. Secondly, feed them abundantly. And, thirdly, throw the strength into one bud instead of three or four. We call this disbudding.

Filet of Flounders

MANY are the facts of state that are discussed around the tables in the National Press Club, in Washington, which never see the pages of a newspaper. There is many a faithful waiter who could tell secrets if he would, but Press Club waiters also have professional reticences.

ALONG THE GARDEN PATH

LET'S look behind the veil and try to answer the questions of why climbers climb. Of course we could say that plants climb because we place them in good soil and give them plenty of food and an abundance of moisture. But for the real reason we shall have to look for some hidden secrets of how the plants get up in the world.