March 1936

Across the Editor's Desk

THINGS are happening to important wild life areas in the United States which have aroused the conservationists, and with good reason. As this is written, one of the bones of contention is the Santee-Cooper project of South Carolina, which involves great damage to several hundred square miles of coastal swamp land in an exceptionally favorable place for rearing wild ducks, wild turkeys, bear, deer, and other forms of wild life.

THE Diary OF A PLAIN DIRT GARDENER

Mar. 1 Up and away in the dawning to Dayton and to the garden school being conducted by friend Victor Ries, of the university extension staff. There was a big crowd, nearly 500, and I took a turn on the program to talk about the garden medicine shelf. John Siebenthaler invited me to stay over to a meeting of the Dayton Rose Society at night.

IT'S News TO ME!

WHEN Billy, Nick's nephew, visits us for a drive, even Pal, the dog, knows it'll be a very entertaining ride-- and with plenty of talk about cars! Billy inspects the tires, watches dashboard gauges, is so eager to learn to drive. In the sketch Nick's at the wheel, chatting with Billy about how to drive a car. Nick goes over the rules:

PLAN FOR SPRINGTIME

THE Early Morning Gardener digs and plants to the tune of his bacon sizzling and frying in the distance, and later rushes toward work with a piece of toast in one hand and a deep blue cornflower in his buttonhole. He should have his garden scintillating and bursting with flowers from the crack of dawn to worktime.

Spring Delivery

HOW much garden tor your money this spring?-- That's going to depend on you, not on the size and number of your orders. Success with the new hedge and good luck with your roses and evergreens hinge on the important hours following their delivery at your door.

Spring Garden Hints

AT LAST he's here! That blustering, blessed, fickle, old forerunner of spring, March!

SIX YEARS LATER

IF ANY late spring or summer day you were to walk with me up the winding driveway behind the vine-covered little house shown on these pages and knock at the side door to ask, "Has Doctor Sexauer come home yet?" and be told by Mrs. Sexauer, smiling in her kindlymanner, "You'll find him in the garden-- just go on back," and we did that, I'm sure you'd stop to catch your breath with ecstasy at the first glimpse of so much loveliness.

RECAPTURE THE FRAGRANT-LEAVE Geraniums

WHY do I like Fragrant-leaved Geraniums? Because they're spicily fragrant and quaint and so cheerfully tolerant. Because they're as steeped in associations as old-fashioned roses. They've the charm of lavender and sweet herbs.

HELIX THE SNAIL

HE'S doubtless not altogether a welcome guest in your garden. He helps himself to your biggest strawberry just the day before you've decided to crown a shortcake with it. He eats up the leaf that's placed in exactly the way to set off your best rose to its loveliest advantage.

A LAKESIDE HOME IN THE WEST

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL and Mrs. H. W. Gregg, Seattle, Washington, members of the Better Homes & Gardens family, were both away when I first visited this beautifully proportioned, modified Colonial-style home of theirs on Lake Washington.

PRESENTING OUR Tom Thumb BILDCOST GARDENED-HOME PLANS

A 3-CENT stamp, for postage, will bring you a complete list of materials required to build either house, with the exact quantities of each item. This list is a part of Better Homes & Gardens' BILDCOST GARDENED-HOME PLAN.

CAPE COD CONCRETE

HEARING of a new achievement in home-building which united low cost with virtually fireproof construction, I drove with considerable interest into a wooded section of Bedford Hills, New York, to see it.

New Uses for an Old Friend

GLASS, a new material? Why, we've had glass for centuries! True enough. But then, nothing under the sun is new. if we believe what we're told.

"Chips" TELLS HOW TO KEEP YOUR FURNITURE SHIPSHAPE

"CHIPS" hailed me from the door of his workshop as I stopped in front of his place. His well-lighted shop, with its mingled odors of fragrant Port Orford cedar, marine tar, paints, and glue, was filled with an accumulation of objects collected in "Chips'" long life as a ship's carpenter, lumberjack, cowboy, and home-builder extraordinary.

In Defense of Young Misbehavers

CHILDREN may be a source of great comfort and help to parents in times of family trouble. Often they are. Certainly it's natural, when we fathers and mothers are troubled by grief, illness, or financial worries, to look to even our littlest ones for strength and courage.

WE TEA TO THE TUNE OF Cleaners

THERE'S nothing like taking your household problems to a party with you! I recently did just that, for I was involved in vacuum cleaners and carpet sweepers.

Easy Upkeep DUST DISGUST

ABOVE: Heavy bases on the exterior of Roman palazzos are counted monumental architecture. But imitating them inside a house is a monumental nuisance. Not only does each offset of an ornate base treasure dust, but all the furniture is made to stand well away from the wall. It's no laughing matter to dust behind each piece of furniture-- yet eliminate the base and it becomes child's play with a mop.

FUN and FUNDS!

WHEN club funds dwindle to the vanishing point, it's time to bring folks together in good times compounded of two main ingredients-- fun and funds.

The March "Club Aid"

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

A smart wife can increase the income of a smart husband $1,000 a year or more by doing a great many little things for him that he would otherwise have to do himself-- especially if she has a servant to help her.

The Question Before the House

OUR carpenter has substituted red cedar shingles for the cypress shinggles we specified. Has he a right to do this, and what's the damage he may have caused?

Over the Top

YOU can give an air of distinction to your rooms by such simple things as express individuality in the arrangements of your mantels or sideboards and the space at them. Here are five suggestions:

Tailored for Tea

SPORTY stitches, bold colorings, and tailored edges all add to the trim smartness of these new lunch linens. Two of them are in the ever-beloved cross-stitch with easily crocheted edges. One combines crosses with even-running or Holbein stitch. And the fourth is done in buttonhole only. Simply made, but effective!

Behind Your Backs, Women!--this is what we men talk about

WHAT a chance you've given me to tell women what we men so often discuss behind their backs-- how to furnish and decorate our rooms. When a woman approaches decorating a room occupied by a father, husband, son, or male guest, can she hope to do so good a job they won't feel "feminized"? The average woman is seldom successful.

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"

SPRING! Lilacs, lilacs everywhere. Drowsing contentedlyby cottage doorways, tossing like lavender lace along hedgerows, charging the air with irresistible perfume, they steep our senses in subtle, unforgettable fragrance.

Via Boston

THE broad "ah's" of Boston greet real Boston Baked Beans! From the land of "bean and cod," comes the traditional recipe by which Boston-style beans of the House of Heinz are baked and sauced.

Janet F's First-Birthday Present

LITTLE Janet F. was delighted with her first birthday cake and its single flickering candle. But the best present she got will not be fully appreciated until 1953. It was a child's endowment for $2,000, payable on her eighteenth birthday.

Tattle Tales

TO THE home of Christine Holbrook, associate editor of Better Homes & Gardens, came Art Ross, color photographer, one bright day last fall when the leaves were like flames on the tree-twigs. Equipped with his marvelous camera-- which seems almost uncanny in its ability to capture the subtle tints of the scene, he had traveled 400 miles for his purpose.

"The Love Light in Their Eyes"

CONFESSIONS OF GOOD COOKS

THERE'S nothing more upsetting than a loaf of today's bread and a call for sandwiches. But I've found a way to win. Just trust the loaf to the refrigerator for an hour. The low temperature quickly "firms it up."-- Miss Kathryn Roller, Miami, Florida.

Who'll Win the $5,000

"They're Always Underfoot"

The Gardened Home Next Month

Knitter Knickknacks

Gigantic Gadgets for the Gardened Home

Prizewinners in "Menus-for-a-Day" Contest

Mine and Thine

I GROW MUMS FROM SEED

WHAT a lot of mottoes we find over office desks or displayed in homes --and all to make us live a virtuous or successful life! I draw the line at too many of them, but I confess I do have a favorite sentiment or two. There's one that holds the very answer to successful gardening, especially now that the seed catalogs have arrived to tempt us with new ideas.

Article

MILLIONS

"LEADERS in the packaged-food industry have taken pride in the fact that their have spent millions of dollars, which might have been pocketed in profits, to create and maintain the world's finest research laboratories and experimental kitchens.... to the end that the foods which mean health for our people and sturdy growth for our future citizens might be made more nourishing, more economical, more easily prepared" by our womenfolk, who have thus been liberate from most of the old-time kitchen drudgery."

Many More Garden Stories Next Month!

A Boggy Garden

IN OUR swamps and bogs grow many interesting and beautiful plants we've never tried to transplant to our gardens, because we've thought they wouldn't thrive under the conditions we could give them. But now, by using the method devised by Doctor Merton R. Sharpe, of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, we can have bog plants growing anywhere.

Along the Garden Path

SHOULD a man have the tip of his finger cut off, wouldn't you be amused to see him rush to a flower pot to plant it? And then how very strange it would be if the finger should take root and grow into a new man. Yet this is what happens to plants. Given a leaf, and if it be planted in a favorable environment, it will reproduce not only leaves, but also a root, a stem, and flowers.