October 1940

ACROSS THE Editor's Desk

WE ARE living in a period of material progress. No country and no age has ever been blessed with such an astonishing abundance of varied benefits. What with the radio, the automobile and the movies, the bridge-table, the golf-course, and in summer the camps and the bathing beaches, the weeks aren't long enough for the things we would like to do.

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

Last evening the rain--blessed rain-- somewhat ended the drouth of three months. It turned so cold this Sunday morning I hurriedly built a fire in the jolly old furnace. Find there is a ton or so of coal left over from last spring. Another blessing.

House With a Wink

THE casual passer-by, out for a Sunday drive, can't help but notice and like at once the little house on Longview Drive, Scarsdale, New York-- the one with perky dormers rising out of the broad expanse of roof, the twinkle in its casement windows and shutters, and, most of all, the wink of the front-door entry.

How to Keep From Going to Blazes

IN DETROIT two boys sharing a second-floor bedroom were found dead in the upper hall by firemen responding to an alarm. Altho their windows opened on a porch roof, the brothers tried to escape from the burning house via the stairs.

Plant the Big 4 Now!

IRIS, peonies, Oriental Poppies, and yellow daylilies can well be called the backbone perennials. They give a perennial border substantial form and keep it in color both early and late. They are all hardy and long-lived and none require special soil mixtures.

A Terrace Primer

IT'S terrace-time! Just the time of year to lay the terrace you've been watching and planning for on your Sunday afternoon drives. With the flower season well over, you can transplant, lay stone, and replant to get set for full bloom around the terrace next year. Besides, by next spring both the grounds and terrace will have lost that unpleasant, freshly torn-up look.

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Solve Your Window Problems This Way

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FALL'S too glorious a season to be viewed thru anything but fresh, exquisitely framed windows.

We Rescue a Room in the Doldrums

MEET Mrs. Martin J. Matthews, Young Woman with a Problem! Or rather she was a Young Woman with a Problem until a short time ago, when suddenly the whole perplexing puzzle was solved for her.

She Called This Bedroom "Hopeless!"

"WHAT can I do with our awful bedroom?... it's plain as sand... it looks utterly hopeless!" So wailed Mrs. Bernard Grant in her first letter to us about her drab Cinderella bedroom, so distressingly different from every other room in her home.

Wall Borders Star in Bright New Roles

Two Picture-Book Homes in the West

THE village lamplighter might well have paused before this enchanting bit of Old New England to tend the light and pass on. You half expect to hear a town crier as he hurries past the old picket fence bearing news from abroad, so fine is the flavor of this little house.

Bring Home a Piece of Indian Summer

I RUN up an alarming gasoline bill every fall rolling thru the hills to see the rich colors of autumn. The roads are swarming with hundreds like me. Brilliantly tinted maples, groups of yellowish hickories, and a few purple oaks swing by. In the hills is a flaming patchwork of orange, yellow, and sumac red. Ahead, a spot of gold lengthens, grows larger, floats, then sails above us.

Make Your Attic Work for You

IF YOU'RE planning a new house, your attic ought to be blueprinted as carefully as any room. It's hard, of course, to study an attic that isn't even built. But it's much harder to use one that was built without careful thought.

OCTOBER Indoor Gardening Guide

FOR five years I read and marveled at the stories of growing bumper crops of tomatoes, corn, and plants of all sorts in small tanks of chemical solutions.

OCTOBER Outdoor Gardening Guide

Now at harvest and chrysanthemum time is the time to think over this year's experiences and draw on them to set the garden right for tiptop performance next season. Interesting combinations you noticed during the year can now be developed in your own garden. Last year, more or less by accident, I grouped a large mass of Azure Lungwort under some low-branched Forsythia intermedia along a driveway entrance.

How to Perk Up Your Bathroom

THERE'S no spot like a bathroom for netting big returns on small investments. If yours isn't everything you wish it were in good looks and convenience, there's an astonishing number of things you can do about it.

Leave It to Your Washer

WASHDAY problems differ-- from family to family, season to season, even from one washday to the next. Mr. Smith gardens in slacks; at the Jones house the twins' having measles complicates the sheet problem. Last week you were doing all the curtains in anticipation of company. This week guests have gone, and you have table linens, towels, and sheets galore.

No Place for Softies

THE stiffest job confronting us as parents today is that of preparing our youngsters for a future that is unpredictable, but that may be both difficult and dangerous.

Hats Off to a Marvelous Marble Cake!

NO WONDER first-prize winner Mrs. George S. Baer, of Ashland, Ohio, is such a whiz with marble cakes. She's been whipping 'em up since the tender age of 12! To her highly superior Chocolate Marble Cake goes top prize of $5 in our Cooks' Contest for Luscious Loaf Cakes and Chops With a Flourish.

Dining at the End of the Trail

ENCHANTING! It's the one fitting word for La Fonda in old Santa Fe, New Mexico, where one dines in the most delightful of Old World settings.

Those Little Things!

I SHOULD have been in bed. I was only a slip of a child then. But Judge Taylor and my father were enjoying' one of their periodic after-dinner conversations, the Judge liked youngsters, and I was fascinated by his Lincolnesque appearance and drawling voice.

Tulips for Christmas, Narcissus for New Year's

Now is the season to lay by treasure that will turn each winter month into spring and bring the fragrance and freshness of May into your living-room. Incidentally, it'll help solve your gift problems inexpensively.

Need a Small Tree, Shrub, or Vine?

ONE of the most useful of all sorts of plants for home-grounds planting is euonymus. It grows so well without fuss and trouble and gives such pretty effects in so many ways that there's hardly a garden in the United States which doesn't need it.

Don't Shy From Consulting a Decorator

THIS WORLD is divided into two sorts of women, tastefully speaking. There's the woman who knows what she likes.

G.E MAZDA LAMPS

It's a Fact--but Which?

Good Cooks Go Wild

Along the Garden Path

WHEN HARVESTING GOURDS, leave a 2-inch stem. When the gourds are dry, insert a safety pin thru each stem, and swish the gourds around in a pint of shellac in a saucepan; then, using the pin as a hook, suspend them on wire, with drip pan under to conserve shellac. Pour leftover shellac back in bottle. You'll be surprised at how small an amount of shellac is consumed.

The QUESTION Before the House

In mixing paint is it better to use plain raw linseed oil or boiled linseed oil?-- Adam Clary, Warren, Ark.

"Why Not Cheaper in Big Packages?"

A QUESTION comes in from Mrs. R. H. D., of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and I'm surprised it hasn't been asked before. She writes, "We buy soap flakes and many grocery products in 'family-size' packages, and shaving cream and tooth paste in 'giant' tubes because they come cheaper that way.

Fostoria

Harvest of Food Tricks for Fall

A-NUTTING we would go-- and make the squirrels divide with us all the goodies of Autumn. Invite four favorite guests and spread the fare. But take a leaf from the book of your bushy friends and keep the menu simple. Which means plenty of time for frisking about in the painted woods, gathering red and gold leaves for hallway and table decorations.

How to Become a Chocolate-Whis

Hollywood and Yon Furnish a Room

DOES the notion of decorating your home "a la Hollywood" sound too, too bizarre? Then hold up a moment while I explain. My thought isn't that you create rooms like those in a movie set. After all, rooms you see on the screen were built not for your family but for another very definite group of people.

Incantation of Autumn

The Man Next Door

One illustration of feminine logic is that a wife expects her husband to be more attentive to her homely friends than to her lovely ones.

Don't Sell It to the Junk Man

WE WERE all for selling it to the junk man-- our wobbly, down-at-the-heel dining-room set-- when a magazine story on refinishing furniture smote us in the eye. We're fools for challenges, and here was one that put our backs up. Others had done it-- why couldn't we?

Your Hall Keynotes Your Home

How different are the airy, streamlined halls of today from those dark and congested pockets which ushered us into our grandmothers' homes! Galloping steeds and pink-coated riders leaping so boldly across the walls ... great fleur-delis on the prized Axminster ...

Bildcost Picks a Modern

"I'LL build me a house," mused the architect, "that forgets the folderols of past patterns. It'll be free of ornament as an igloo, and every inch usable."

Landscaping ON A BUDGET

Flash Lunches

MY YOUNG husband must have been either a very brave man or a singularly trusting one to take me on without one trial pie or biscuit to prove my worth. My ignorance of cooking was shocking. But even a gentleman and a scholar can't eat flops three times a day and keep his sunny disposition.

QUAKER OATS AMERICA'S POPULAR YEAR 'ROUND BREAKFAST

My "White Elephants" BECOME Furnishings Treasures

WHEN I came into possession of the old house, I was faced by a herd of "white elephants"-- furniture pieces and odds and ends of varied vintage and value, of no use as they stood, but with Possibilities.

QUESTION Is Your Lawn Ready for Winter?

Now, more than any other time of year, is your chance to put your lawn in shape, to build a thicker, richer turf for next year than you've ever had before. Do you know how? Check yourself below.

Indian Summer Time

Grin When You Want to

I ONCE knew a little girl who had a doll with a painted smile. Cheerful little creature it was, too, and the little girl loved her to a pulp. But one day there was a bumped knee, and the small owner stood trying to hold back her tears. All at once she noticed her adored doll sitting with a cheerful, beaming face in a corner of the davenport, and she threw her across the room with feeling and vigor.

Euonymus--A Good Name

Attics That DO Work

ON THE day we found our son's sketches for an attic den, the remodeling bug bit our whole family--bit hard and deep. We should have been satisfied with our brand-new bungalow, but we weren't. There'd have to be a clubroom, fireplace and all, in the attic.

Ah, Gentle Nurse!

How's Your D. A.?

What Plants Are These?

Fool-Proof! Dent-Proof! Danger-Proof

Ever Hear of Them?

Dad, Sons, & Co.