November 1940

ACROSS THE Editor's Desk

THE Pilgrims are today illustrious, not because they were clever but because they were courageous. With everything against them, they decided to carry on and make a go of it. And the secret of their courage strikes us in these days as very strange. It was Thanksgiving. They conquered the grumbling within them by Gratitude.

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

It has been mentioned aforetime in these pages that Tom, who bosses the barbershop where I get my haircuts, is a reader of Better Homes & Gardens, and at his home is a gardener of note. Today, as I had my usual shingle, he told me of how he keeps down moles.

Do Right by Your Corner Fireplace

THERE'S something endearingly informal and friendly about a corner fireplace. It saucily tosses its head at modern decorators' rules to the effect that walls and furniture must be severely parallel, that kitty-corner affairs are taboo. "Phoo-ee on the formal stuff!" it boasts. "I'm going to be different, and you'll love it."

Builders Three, my Boys and me

THE boys were for it, and that made it unanimous. We were going to build our house in the woods. Not a camp or a summer place, but a home to live in full-time for a good many years, a big, permanent house where we could drop anchor.

Bildcost Discovers a Sturdy Pioneer

ALL HAIL to the pioneer! Whether he's our forefather or the man next door, a couple of cheers for the man with an idea and the courage to give it life. Here's a pioneer among houses, a rugged little home that blazes its own path thru established architecture.

Plants You Don't Have to Coddle

A NAVAL AVIATOR, flying back and forth near La Jolla, California, on gunnery drill, was increasingly puzzled by a vast "Persian rug" patterned in blazing color on the brown hills below Mount Soledad. It covered multiple acres; it shamed the rainbow; and at the rocketing speed of a pursuit plane, it simply defied analysis.

16 CURES FOR DRIVEWAY COMPLAINT

TAKE hope, folks! Driveway complaint-- as common as overeating and as exasperating as a toothache-- can be cured. And that, to many a harassed homemaker and muttering male, is good news.

November Indoor Gardening Guide

NERVE specialists sometimes prescribe that patients watch a bowl of goldfish for half an hour or more. They say that following the graceful, rhythmic motion of the fish has a relaxing effect on the jitteriest of nerves.

November Outdoor Gardening Guide

IN NOVEMBER Old Man Winter is ambitious to get his work started, so our great concern this month is tenderly tucking our plants in for their long rest. Since last winter was so hard on plants, we'll probably tend to cover everything so heavily it smothers.

Houses With a Past . . . Doorways With a Future Nerves Worn Thin?

Colonial Memories of their childhood in Upper New York State brought to Dr. and Mrs. Wayne Fox visions of the fine old American Colonial homes they had learned to love so well. They simply couldn't be content until they had one like them.

Those Clever Bankses Are Back Again!

MEET Mr. and Mrs. Howard Banks again... first introduced to you by Better Home & Gardens in the May, 1939, issue just after they'd finished doing some pretty special things in the way of decorating a small apartment on a budget. They're proud new-home owners now, out in West-wood, California, near the studios where Mr. Banks is working in motion pictures.

Today's Finest Pictures Are Yours for a Song

CREATING rooms around the colors and themes of fine pictures offers the keenest sort of adventure in home-decorating-- and today it's something every one of us can enjoy.

Here's a Furniture Adventure

IT'S the biggest and best furniture news yet-- this story of 50 exquisitely styled furniture pieces, all scaled to fit together, and interchangeable in every room in your home except kitchen and bathroom! Skillfully built of northern American-grown birch known for its strength and hardness, finished in the warm amber of the wood itself, planned along lines of modern efficiency and compactness, these brilliant new furnishings belong in our homes of today.

MIRRORS for Your Reflection

WITH mirrors large, mirrors small, mirrors short, mirrors tall... banish that bored look from room and hall!

We Parents

WHAT do you think about letting youngsters sell from door to door? I'd always figured there was just one answer to that-- until the other day I heard a woman laying parents and organizations like the Boy Scouts over the barrel for bothering householders with their youthful salesmen.

I Hung My Books Around Me

I LIKE books. Agents have always found me easy prey. So I've stacks and piles and chairfuls of them-- but until a happy yesterday no place at all to put them!

How to "Plant Out" Your Basement Windows

SORE SPOT with almost all older homes is their glaring basement windows. Yet they're not a necessary evil. You cap "plant them out" without shutting out light and air. Here's how:

Our Cabin by the Sea

ONE afternoon as three of us, faculty women at Oregon State College, were driving thru the Oregon countryside, we stopped for tea near a quaint old second-hand store. On the way back to our car we pressed our faces to the store window. We spied something unlike anything we'd ever seen-- a squat stove with a wide-open face, like a fireplace pulled out from the wall, decorated with iron ears of corn, and supporting an enormous stove pipe.

Furniture Styles AND HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM

THE name of Thomas Chippendale is one of the best known in all furniture history. First of the great Eighteenth-Century English designers, he was also the most famous-- noted for his carvings and cabinetmaking as well as for his designs, which still enjoy great popularity today.

Three Fireplaces, and a Garden Attached!

FOR a long time we looked for a certain kind of house with a certain kind of garden attached-- a garden where my husband could raise Golden Bantam Corn and pumpkins for Halloween.

Along the Garden Path

NEED SEED packets? Follow these directions. It's easier than it sounds, is handy and fun.

Shopping for Furniture?

You get what you pay for is a bit of oldtime wisdom as true today as when Grandmother sniffed at "trash" and spent extra pennies on "quality stuff."

Here's What to Look for--

YOU'VE heard it hundreds of times-- that furniture tells what we are, reveals our good taste or lack of it. And of course it's true. But that's only half the reason for insisting on a quality product. Even if our furniture didn't tell tales about us-- even if we didn't enjoy ownership of fine things-- we'd still seek good quality because of its ability to "take it."

You Can Pick Pies From This Hedge

BAXTER was happy. I knew he had something to show me even before he laid down the shears and said, "See what you think of these over here."

We Built Ours Out to Fit

HANGING out a shingle above the doorway of your own home has its assets-- and its own drawbacks. THE day I came to my new home as a bride, years ago, the old house seemed just right. No one expected to have a bathroom for every bedroom, or sinks that were easy to clean.

What Will Planting Your Grounds Cost?

THO figures never lie, they're often not very frank when they meet you face to face. But my figures are frank; I haven't shaved them to make a good story.

Antiques Fill This Little House

A SMALL home furnished with antiques? Oh, dear, no! I'll confess that was just my reaction-- up to the moment I stepped into the home of Mrs. Earl Bloomer, of Dearborn, Michigan. But in the next hour all my preconceived notions did a rightabout face.

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Is There a House in Your Dreams?

"Now if we had it to do over again we would have the garage attached to the house. It would have made a larger-appearing home, and would also have given us a room over the garage...."

Real Decorating Magie--DONE WITH Slip-Covers

Modern Home and a Tasty Wife

DO YOU have a modern house and /or a wife with a reputation for good taste?

BETTER HOMES AMONG OURSELVES

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DAD'S Practical Pointers

A piece of sandpaper will give you a good grip for opening the tightest screw-top container.-- M. G. G. & F. F.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Apparently the well-poised young brunet in the Cape Cod house is well aware of her husband's faults, because she discusses them as if they were charming virtues.

"Hold On!"

THE life insurance commitment, like the contract of marriage, is something that shouldn't be taken lightly with the mental reservation that you can always quit if you get a change of heart later. For every policy of life insurance becomes increasingly attractive as years pass by.

Here's an Idea!

What's This About Earthworm Gardening?

WAY back in Cleopatra's day Egyptians attributed the fertility of the Nile Basin largely to the mold cast up thru the centuries by wiggly little earthworms. But Charles Darwin was the first to go in seriously for earthworm-raising. He wrote a book about them.