April 1937

All Records Broken!

THIS issue of Better Homes & Gardens is the most notable published since the first copy was printed, a little less than 15 years ago.

DAFFODILS AND PUSSY WILLOWS

THE DIARY OF A PLAIN DIRT GARDENER

April 2 It was 2 this morning when Maggie and I drove in home, back from our spring-vacation trip to Chicago and Wisconsin. This explains why, when work time came this afternoon, I just sat in the house, tired and sleepy. Besides, it was so cold outside.

UNDER THE SPREADING SYCAMORE

LABELS are likely to be dangerously misleading. That's why I hesitate to term this comfortable, white house Colonial. Tho we hear much of Colonial in all its variations-- Cape Cod, DutchColonial, California Colonial, and Georgian-- still it seems hardly fair to catalog modern houses too definitely. For, as in this home of Mr. and Mrs. G. P. Ryan, Better Homes & Gardens readers of Los Angeles, often their appeal lies in discreet borrowing from the fine tradition of the past combined with bold ingenuity for present demands.

FROM PIGMIES TO GIANTS

THOSE child prodigies of Hollywood, whose names are starred in the twinkling lights on Broadway, stir our imagination as to their family strain. "Is their success due to luck, brains, genius, a certain family sturdiness-- or what?" we ask.

HEED NATURE'S Beauty Advice

NO SMALL part of the fascination of gardening lies in the endless possibility for new experiences. There's always something new, something different to be done to add a pleasant note of freshness.

Hedges FOR ALL PURPOSES

IN PIONEER days in Kansas we planted hundreds of miles of Osage-orange hedges. Recently, when I was revisiting that engaging country, I found the inhabitants still using the name "hedge" as synonymous with Osage-orange.

TOUR OF BETTER HOMES

NEWS OF new HOME-FURNISHINGS

FIRST for a piece of good news and an invitation: The home-furnishings department of Better Homes & Gardens has been having a thoroly good time selecting furnishings for three houses to be known as the Five Star Homes. They're being built in Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse, New York, this spring by the Niagara Hudson Power Corporation. It all started with a survey in which the people of New York state voted for the type of home architecture they wanted.

PICTURE STORY OF NEW FURNITURE

ADVENTURES IN TABLE SETTINGS

HISTORY LIVES ON IN THE ROSE GARDEN

WHILE Napoleon Bonaparte was sowing dragon's teeth about the world, the Empress Josephine was contenting herself at home with promoting the gentler art of hand-pollination of roses. It was this interest of hers, which lent such impetus to the creating of new varieties, that officially dates rose nomenclature from her time.

AT CLOSE RANGE

MINUTE-SAVERS ROUND THE CLOCK

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF EGG WHITES

IMAGINE the surprise of the first cook who by accident or design discovered that clear, viscous egg whites would beat into billowy clouds of tiny white bubbles. It's such fun to have this miracle happen right under our own beater that it's no wonder egg whites are often overbeaten. Yes, true it is, a stiffbeaten egg white in its prime isn't the result of the longest, fastest beating possible

IT'S NEWS TO ME!

CHRISTINE HOLBROOK suggests a new, assured way to shop for wallpapers: "It's especially helpful," says Christine, "for a period room, amounts actually to free, authentic advice, arranged automatically, for selecting paper suited to your room

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Paternal pride comes to a jell: Almost half the boys in a certain fashionable eastern prep school write "Jr." after their names. (Yell "Junior!" under the dormitory windows and watch the heads pop out!)

OUR PIONEERS LIKED STONE AND WOOD

IN SOUTHEASTERN Pennsylvania the pioneer houses are simple in design and plan, with inexpensive yet effective details. They're well proportioned and built partly of native stone, which gives to them that rugged individualism so characteristic of their pre-Revolutionary War builders.

PILLOWS

RIGHT in the throes of spring housecleaning? Most of us are these days. And if you've reached the spot where walls, woodwork, floors, and floorcoverings are all blithe and clean, you've, good reason for cheers.

THE Question BEFORE THE HOUSE

IS THERE anything to be gained by priming wood siding on both sides before it's installed?

My Silent Garden Partner

DROUTHS of recent years have emphasized the fact that our gardens need something of more lasting benefit than rivers of water to offset the baking-out process of a scorching sun. Most people realize that humus in some form added to the soil will help to replace lost fertility in lawns and gardens and assist in holding soil moisture.

MY GARDEN IS AN Open Book

EACH year I start with two new loose-leaf books of sturdy, uniform binding. One volume is devoted to the usual notes on planting, charts, seed records, weather reports, and gardening information that may be helpful in planning next year's activities.

Yew FOR YOU

"THE vine loves the hills and the yew tree the north wind and the cold." Two thousand years ago Vergil thus referred to the yew.

MAKE AMERICA More Beautiful

An Inside Job for Outside

OUR back-yard "living-room," in which we spend much time during the warm summer months, has been made more attractive and more completely furnished, as you can see, by the trellis above. It has several unusual features. One, its location over the sidewalk near the back-door entrance separates the back-yard area from the rest of the grounds, giving us privacy.

A FEW NOTES ON Your Piano

THE family piano can be the most beautiful, the most beloved possession in our home-- or it can be the cause of daily apologies, the sour note in our furnishings harmony, and a discordant headache to all music-lovers. It all depends upon whether we treat it as an honored guest, deserving of every care, or as just another mechanical servant, capable of taking care of itself.

For INTESTINAL HEALTH

IT'S not a subject for dinner tables or mixed groups. It's been banned somewhat from the radio. We don't usually discuss it on streetcars.

"They All Stop to Admire"

Your Upstairs Hall--The Forgotten Spot?

AN UPSTAIRS hall is pretty likely to be the stepchild of the home. It gets precious little attention and usually falls heir to the hand-me-downs from the rest of the house. Just run up and take a long, fresh look. Was it like that? Then now's the time to make it really one of the family, for halls, both upstairs and down, are thresholds for your rooms.

HE CREATED A Park FOR HIS NEIGHBORS

IF YOU were to travel along the highway at North Chatham, N. Y., the road which in stage-coach days was known as the Albany and Hartford Turnpike, you'd come upon a small but beautiful park. Your first guess would probably be that this was a community park, but you'd soon decide that it couldn't be, for somehow it doesn't resemble the sort of a park that's planned in a town meeting and created by a group of workmen following a blueprint.

HOW Chicken a la King ORIGINATED

OF COURSE, you've eaten Chicken a la King at one time or another. Everybody has-- and nearly everybody likes it. Perhaps it was in a swanky restaurant or a side-arm lunch. Or you may have made it yourself or turned it out of a can. But aside from a fleeting suspicion that it was likely named for some royal head of Europe, have you ever really wondered who thought it up, and how, when, and why it got its name?

Tune in on Bird Broadcasts

JENNIE LIND may have been called the Swedish Nightingale by "the mighty Barnum," but it can truthfully be said that she never sang like a nightingale.

CAMERA SHORTS

IF YOU like gates-- and some of us like them even if we can do no more than put their pictures in our scrapbook-- here are two (above and below) worth noting. The first is an old one in Williamsburg, Virginia, which fortunately was well enough preserved to be copied, for a replica, exact in every measurement, can be seen in another part of the town.

THEY "BELONG"

GEORGE is a practical sort of fellow. If you accused him of being a philosopher he'd most likely throw the end of a two-by-four he had just cut off in his home workshop in your direction. In common with millions of other American fathers, he builds things for his home and his children.

THEY HAVE TO BE Tough

OUR flower garden, being well above the 46th parallel, faces temperatures which drop to 50 degrees below zero in winter. During the extreme cold wave of 1935-36, readings went to 30 degrees below every day for a month.

A FAMILY'S Dream Comes True

WE RECOMMEND VENEER

TO DISPARAGE a piece of furniture because it's veneered is comparable to yelling "Get a horse" at a passing motorist.

Houseclean This Spring

THERE'S a lot more to this business of spring house cleaning than just laying about with a dust mop, oiled cloth, and scrub brush. It's the perfect time for a broadside on the whole problem of gimcracks, gadgets, whatnots-- in short, on accessories in your home.

THEN CAME THE Golden Oak

A MERE forty years ago golden oak furniture, with all its attending fantastic fancywork, came into full bloom and became the rage. In our neighborhood no home was complete without its golden oak sideboard. Ours had a large mirror framed with the greatest carved curlicues you ever saw and topped by a high shelf sup ported by heavily carved brackets.

The Club Program Comes of Age!

SEEKING a cross-section of club opinion on today's activities, to serve as a program-planning guide, I sent a questionnaire to one hundred women representing every state and widely diversified groups. City, rural, nationally affiliated, and independent clubs were included.

AN INSECT BAG-O'-TRICKS

IT WAS with no disrespect to the great Emancipator that we christened a newcomer to our private menagerie "Abie Lincoln." Arriving as he did, securely and permanently housed in a snug little log cabin, what else could we do but honor him with that illustrious name?

"How Safe Is My Life Insurance?"

RECENTLY the president of a large life-insurance company was asked, "Isn't the safety of life insurance still threatened by the fact that many investments you own are worth less than when you bought them?"

How Much?

A Cinderella FLOWER EMERGES

REMEMBER when the zinnia was just another annual, planted because it could be depended on to give color to the garden when other things were passing on, considered a flower of convenience, hardly ever of great beauty? What miraculous changes have taken place in the last few years! The garden Cinderella has come forth in startling new colors, reshaped, and re-established in the swankiest gardens.

CRISP, COOL, COLORFUL

PULL OFF THE LID

IT'S time to stop sloshing around, poking under the leaves to see if the bulbs are showing. Pull off the lid and let the Spring sun's rays warm the earth to action. In most localities the garden's winter cover may be removed. Left on too long, foliage beneath becomes yellow and spindly.

Article

I Like Them All

JUST as the Chinese discovered roast pork, so, accidentally, I got my taste for cabbages. It happened that a friend, new at gardening, boasted that he had 32 items in his spring order. To go him one better, I ordered several members of the cabbage family.

ALL FROM A Little Plot

WE LIVE in a city where, altho our lot covers a quarter acre, the space is none too large for children to play. Consequently, since our garden plots are in constant danger from running feet, we can use only a little ground for gardening.

Newspaper News

MONDAY morning-- in some homes every morning-- finds the homemaker literally gathering the news from corners, chairs, tables, and floor where newspapers have been discarded by the family.

"Eats" Insects

IN CALIFORNIA, on the Sierra Nevadas it a height of 5,000 feet, and in Oregon, there grows the Darlingtonia, or cobra- plant It looks like a snake about to strike. This unusual plant lives in undrained places where the soil is poor in nitrogen and the capture of insects is one way of getting certain food elements without going to the trouble of manufacturing them.

THEY Grow FOR ME

SCHIZANTHUS is known to most people only as a pot plant which one buys in the winter and early spring from a florist. As such, it's extensively grown in Europe, where it's known to the French as "Schizanthus" (pronounced ski-zan'-thus), to the Germans as "Spaltblume," and to the Spanish as "Esquisanto flor de mariposa."

Animal or Plant--Which?

FOR 200 years one elusive organism has kept the scientists guessing. Should it be classified as a plant or as an animal? The more radical of the scientists are divided into two camps-- those that call the slime molds Myxomycetes (slime fungus) and those that call them Mycetozoa (fungus animals).

Chef Anatole's Trout Amandine

FAMOUS in a city renowned for good food, is La Louisiane, in New Orleans. In a room bright with white enamel and red damask copied after the famous restaurant La Rue, in Paris, you dine before the glistening mirrors, in which has been reflected a full century of food-loving notables.

Easy Upkeep CLOSET CHAOS

WHEN a bed extends almost to a corner of a room but not quite, and when, because of lack of storage space, it gets your nerves jangled trying to keep the room neat, a practical solution is to build a cupboard which has a pull-out clothes-rod hanger, a series of drawers, and, in addition, on the side toward the end of the bed, cupboard doors and open shelves for books and knickknacks.

NEW FLOWERS YOU OUGHT TO GROW

IT'S one thing to read about new perennials in the catalogs and another thing to see them for yourself. Not that catalogs aren't accurate and filled with information. They are! It's just natural that you get'a more complete conception of a novelty by seeing it growing, row after row, in the nursery.

The Pansy

How to Prune

IN A rough way, fruit plants may be divided into two groups: first, those which bear their fruit on wood (spurs) 2 years or older but bear a part on 1-year twigs and, second, those that bear only on 1-year wood.

Candlebearers

THE desert lights its own candles. Over the hills and across the higher reaches they flame thru the spring months, arresting every passing eye by the splendor of their coloring.

ALONG THE GARDEN PATH

IT'S entirely reasonable for members of The Week-End Gardeners' League to feel greater affection for perennials than they do for annuals. Perennials stick around for several seasons, but annuals must be started from scratch each year.