March 1940

ACROSS THE Editor's Desk

SOMETIMES we have a notion that it would be very nice to move into a larger house. We may not worry very much about those marble staircases and luxurious swimming-pools that look so alluring in the movies. But we could do with one or two more rooms, and maybe a larger living-room.

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

Home to work I come this afternoon. The first undone chore is the tools. I like to finish it before the wet weather sets in. So I rounded up every tool on the place, scraped off dirt with an old knife, sharpened edges with a new file, painted metal parts with oil, wiped off surplus, and polished wooden handles with an oiled rae.

TATTLE TALES

Resemblance? Writes Samuel Halevy, Cambridge, Massachusetts "The other day one of our neighbors asked us if we saw the picture of oui boy on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens for November. She forthwiti handed us the cover in which a boy and a little dog are enjoying a candiec apple together, and lo and behold! There was a remarkable resemblanct to our boy."

PLANT-RAISING BUGABOOS On the Run...

GARDENING was a cinch until science muscled in. If things didn't grow, they didn't, and that was that.

On the Run

Soilless plant culture, much bally- hooed, has developed a truly amazing offshoot what looks like an almost fool-proof way to grow your own plants from seed. So remarkable are the results that it takes real effort to hold one's enthusiasm for this method in check for fear that, tho the truth is told, the account of it may sound too good to be true.

On the Run

To MY MIND, a coldframe is the greatest fun of all gardening. After one season with my coldframe, one season of the joyful experience of nursing baby seedlings thru to maturity and being rewarded with success beyond my dreams, I wonder why I spent so many years and so much money in buying potted plants each spring.

PAINTING POINTERS

BIGGEST piece of news in paint is that paint-making has become an exact science and that we've rediscovered color as an architectural weapon. The former you may have suspected; the latter may come as a surprise.

Bildcost Goes to long Island

PROBABLY the most attractive home development of its kind in the country is in Harbour Green, down on the south shore of Long Island. One architect, Randolph Evans, designed most of the homes in it. A specialist in small homes, a housing consultant for Bethlehem Steel and other corporations, Evans is one of the nation's best in small- home design.

Gyppsy Gardeners

CROWING wild in Texas you might find a little club moss, the resurrection plant or the Egyptian-rose. It has no blossom and doesn't pretend to have. A peddler in Missouri sold this moss to home-owners for five times its value by saying: "Here's a beautiful flowering shrub, rapid-blooming and very rare."

Fuchsia

From South America come the marimba, the carioca, and most exotic of all the fuchsia. Long after the marimba is silent and the carioca stilled, the fuchsia, tamed to our temperate climate, will remain to glorify our moderate gardens with its immoderate beauty.

Hosta

If YOU'RE looking for something sure to bloom in shady spots, stretch out the glad-hand to hosta, or plantainlilies. Stretch it out expansively, wholeheartedly. Plantain- lilies stand first when it's a question of shade. Smart people count them indispensable.

MARCH Indoor GARDENING GUIDE

Let's Make a Story Garden: In March I always have a spell of mid-winter nostalgia. My winter bouquets begin to look so drab I chuck 'em with vengeance into the fire. The geraniums and begonias seem so sprawling and gauche I want to cut off their topknots. I am, in fact, in anything but a kissable mood. Nothing looks good: everything's a mess. Of course, I know what's needed.

MARCH Outdoor GARDENING GUIDE

March is a mosaic of wind, rain, sun, and ice We need to exercise a sixth sense as well as consult the weatherman to know when to trust tender plants to the elements to get them off to an early start.

Relieve your window Pains

"What shall I do with that window?" It's a poser that turns up a good many times in any woman's homemaking career. But it's one that isn't nearly as tricky as we're sometimes led to believe not if we'll tackle it with the same enthusiasm, originality, and good sense we use in selecting the clothes we wear.

Wall News This Spring

EVER notice how, with the first tingle of spring, walls take on a pleading look, begging for bright new faces? And this spring it's going to be high adventure shopping for them, for stores are blooming with enchanting ways for making old walls look like new.

TWO OF A KIND BEAT A FULL HOUSE

All decorations are the simplest possible, all appealingly boyish. Everything is washable fabrics, floor, even the wallpaper. To gain room for drawer space, we've dispensed with box-springs and put the money saved into the finest mattresses either the conventional sort or the new foam-rubber type. Laid on the built-in wood-drawer units, they're entirely comfortable.

To Bored Wives

And so they lived happily ever after." The honeymoon is over. The little house glitters with fresh paint. The smell of wallpaper paste bouquets each room. The wedding-present silver gleams from the dining-room buffet. The vacuum sweeper has yet to blow out its first fuse.

Here Comes Cooky in the News

Light for the Lazy

If WE weren't all so lazy, we'd look better, feel better, and have better eyes. And that's no pet phobia of mine. Any doctor will tell you so. Just concentrate on the next person you see poring over a book or a bit of needlework in a darkish room.

LITTLE GARDENERS HAVE Big Fun

One of the most memorable lessons in parenthood I ever had came the day my little two-year-old Marian padded along behind me as I set cabbage plants in the garden. While my back was turned she upset my bucket of water and scudded back to the innocent shade of the grape arbor.

Details for Everybody

It'S not often you see a fiveroom home done in the English tradition. Big places, yes, but not five-room ones. Yet this home, designed by William N. Caton for the S. J. Coes, Winfield, Kansas, nicely carries on that rugged, enduring look of the moors. Like it?

Money Garden for Children

The Twitchells have three small children. Ann's 5; Jean's 7; Tommy's 9. Recently their father told me of an interesting type of endowment he has taken for each child.

Our Front and

Like so many homes built about twenty-five years ago, ours had the then-fashionable front and back parlors separated by rolling doors. The fireplace was centered on one side of the front room, with a recessed window on either side. Across the back of the rear room were three small windows extending out about a foot and a half beyond the line of the house in bay-window fashion.

How Big Is a Boiler?

Modern science certainly is wonderful," remarked Mr. Putter, setding back to his after-dinner cigar. "I'm thinking particularly of the way in which you specified the correct boiler size for our new house. I don't see how a fellow can tell just how much heat a house is going to need.

Do Better Homes Need Dining-Rooms?

ShALL we chuck the family dining-room overboard? That's the opening gun for many a pitched battle between architects and home- builders these days. Like most debates, it's many-sided.

Something New in Porches

'Nope," said the carpenter, shifting his cigar to the other corner of his mouth with his tongue and squinting at the house front between narrowed eyelids. "Nope, it can't be done! It ain't never been done, has it? Well, then, it stands to reason, if it coulda been done somebody woulda done it already."

Furnishing Decorating

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Well, I hear the modern young man across the street has instructed his Wife that his heavy woolen underwear isn't to he hung outdoors to dry beside her silken things.

Comes Resurrection

WHEN the A. B. Wellborns of Schenectady went shopping for a home and came back with a dirty gray garage and a 150 by 550 birch- wooded lot, some people sniffed. But the Wellborns, as they see it, "got what they wanted a large lot, a 'good' neighborhood, rural atmosphere, the 'right' school district, and, of course, a house. All on a lean pocketbook, too."

Decorating With Bookshelves

Here's an Idea!

An embarrassing number of doors in your living-room, dining-room, or bedroom? Think nothing of it Camouflage the one not needed by skillful use of Venetian blinds, curtains, and vines.

Fourteen Famed Fuchsias

Rolla: slightly double, sepals pale pink, corolla white with pinked edges, medium height. With many fuchsia-lovers this is first choice.

Your City Can Do It, Too

"We CAME to this town because we heard it was the Garden of Eden. We bought a house on Arbor Avenue and are reveling in the garden and flowers."

FOR THE Handy Man

Often a squeak in a floor board can be eliminated by inserting a screw in the narrow slit which separates the two boards as illustrated. Frequently the squeaking is the result of the failure of one or two boards to rest squarely on a solid foundation, and this method of inserting a screw tightly between the planks serves to steady them.

BUILDING SHORTS

House-Garage Connection Here is a good way to connect a one-car ga. rage to a small story-and-a-hall Cape Cod house when the garage can be entered from the end. The small porch makes the garage inconspicuous; furthermore, it makes the garage ell large enough to have a pleasing relationship to the house.

Mountain and Forest Homes

They're Crazy Over Cactus

"MR. SKINNNN-er, is this a weed?" "Mr. SKINNNN-er, am I doing this right?"

Don't Be a Tax Ostrich

IF YOU'RE like most human beings, you prefer to duck unpleasant matters.

Florida Garden-lovers' Paradise

THERE are no streets of gold in Florida, and you can't produce alpine edelweiss or equatorial exotics, but any plant from the temperate or sub-tropic zones will flourish here if given a little care and plant food.

Whims & Hobbies

Six or seven varieties from a single fruit tree are not uncommon, but Robert A. Troth, Orleans, Indiana, owns a multiple fruit tree which is capable of producing 128 different varieties of apples, 3 of crabapples, and 6 of pears. As a whim, he started setting grafts and buds when the tree was just a seedling.

Along the Garden Path

I RAISE AN ABUNDANCE Of Luscious strawberries in small space by growing them on a terraced bank and stepping up the planting levels with wood, stone, or bricks. Ethel Greenamver. Calif.

How to Have a Better Lawn

IT'S NEWS TO ME!

1 Tailor-trim the lawn edge along concrete walks with this metal Roto Trim's cutting disk. It digs no channels because ditched edges may catch weed seeds or even a slipper-heel. In stores, $2. Brooks Specialty Mfg. Co., 3510 W. 52nd St., Minneapolis, Minn.