May 1940

ACROSS THE Editor's Desk

MOTHER'S DAY, in May, is a simple festival of gratitude within the family, an acknowledgment of a debt that can never be discharged. The members of the family, wherever they may be, still within the home or out in the world for themselves, unite in appreciation of Mother and the sacrifices that make home possible.

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

May 1 By spells, the life of a PDG is hard and full of woe. As I did look outside, the bright sun caused my eyes to blink this morning, and then I saw, to my horror, that the ground was covered with white hoar frost and even unto the comb of the garage roof was the whiteness displayed.

Curtains Take to the Corners

WHEN we were very little, and were naughty, Mother used to tell us to "Go stand in the corner!" Nowadays we're telling that to our windows. Too long have they been allowed to puncture walls in the most inconvenient places and interfere with furniture-placing.

SHALL WE BUILD?

Editor's Note: If you can buy a thing for five thousand, you're foolish to pay six. If you can buy or build a home now for six thousand, you're foolish to pay seven.

Is Your Planting Custom-Made or Mill-Run?

How to Make Tulips Stage a Big Show

TULIPS to beat the catalogs! Spring borders to rival the travel posters! They're yours. Right this very spring! And why not, when it's all a matter of the setting you give the tulips. There are tricks-- a bagful-- to making a few tulips look like many. And there's still time to use most of these tricks!

WAR CUT BULB SUPPLY?

THIS year may mark the end of easy tulipbuying. There are two views on this. One faction says a great many Dutch bulbs were destroyed last fall and among them were many of our old favorites. Dutch growers have over them the threat of invasion and the consequent flooding of land for defense.

If Your Daughter Goes to College

Why the Battle of Words? Realizing that helping a daughter to decide upon the "right" college is more and more an important problem with parents, and realizing, too, that the most vital consideration with parents is the question of what sort of homemaker, wife, mother, and useful citizen a college will turn out-- if college does have a vital influence in that regard-- Better Homes & Gardens has asked three authors to attempt to answer these important questions, and to state the case for the three general choices among educational institutions open to the female sex.

Many of us Disagree

SOME ten years ago a prominent businessman gave the public his warm opinion of women's colleges. He said that the country would be better off if they were all burned to the ground.

Coeducation is the American Way

WHENEVER I hear somebody arguing that Education is better than Coeducation and that girls and boys ought to go to separate colleges so they won't distract each other's minds from their books, I think of Fay Lathrop.

Who Cares About the Weather?

Bill. Bill's my husband. Hot weather makes him belligerent. And he sleeps on the living-room lounge almost all summer because the attic gathers heat all day until it's like a giant radiator, warming up the rooms just below almost beyond endurance and keeping them warm all night.

INTERIOR RECREATED

IF YOU'VE ever tried to tear out some old partitions built of 3 by 3 chestnut, you know what a lot of fun it is, and how sweating long it takes.

MAY Outdoor Gardening Guide

TRUE enough, it's May and many a lawn is slowing with golden dandelions. If yours is one of them, go after the dandelions the latter part of this month while they're using every ounce of energy to produce a million flowers.

Article

Home-Decorating Is Her Hobby

NEXT time you start feeling awfully virtuous about giving your all to making your home attractive-- next time you return from a shattering day spent tracking down just the right draperies, floor-covering, or what not... pause a moment, little woman, and give a thought to Dorothy Cady, whose charming home is living proof that months of planning and weeks of scouting and days of hard work are wonderfully worth it in the end.

It's Paint-Up Time for Summer Furniture

I GET a whale of a lot of fun out of painting my porch and garden furniture each spring. Some household jobs are just plain grind, no matter how you dress them up. But painting bright new frocks on my summer furniture is a keen adventure I wouldn't miss for the world! To mull over daring or dainty harmonies thru the winter-- then watch the dull, stained surfaces disappear under gleaming new coats of color-- is a thrill, and a grand antidote for pent-up spring fever.

Here's an Idea!

I One woman with a cunning new house bought white Indian Head by the bolt, made it into floor-length curtains for every window in the house, and gained variety by artfully draping this firm, washable, easily handled material in classical folds, swags, and pleats to suit each room.

Food Mother used to make

Wake Up and Weed Out

Babies WERE MEANT TO LIVE

BABIES were meant to live! Those little beings Nature brings to the birth hour normal, fully developed, and alive, she intends to have survive. Given half a chance, they will.

Orange Soufflé

AS LIGHT and airy as a spring day-- but a lot more predictable-- is Orange Soufflé with Foamy Sauce, $5 first-prize winner of our Cooks' Contest for "Spring Desserts" and "Veal as You Like It" announced last November.

More Joy From Your Silver

ALL of us have notions we cherish as zealously as tho they were great truths. One of these is that while silver is beautiful stuff to look at and satisfying to possess, it's the dickens to keep clean and shining.

Let's Fix Up the Garage

THE present-day attached garage has become the No. 2 entrance hall of the modern home-- proving there is really nothing new under the sun.

Remodeling?

Summer Takes the Floor

COMES warm weather, and we rush busily and happily about, stowing away blankets, heavy coats, and all the other woolens we can lay hands on. They look hot; they are hot; and nobody wants them around. But the biggest items of "woolliness" in our whole domestic scene we likely leave right out in plain sight for the duration of the summer, never thinking how much.

I Grow Better Flowers in a Cloth House

I THINK I've found an inexpensive substitute for a greenhouse for you.

Cross Your Stitches

CROSS-STITCH is a high-ranking favorite with us needle-plyers these days because it's easy as pie, adapts itself to many types of designs and threads, and blends perfectly with Early-American furnishings now so popular. First mark out your design on cross-section or graph paper, each little square representing a single cross-stitch.

Make Your Mums September's Showgirls

CHRYSANTHEMUMS are your garden's big blondes; big, healthy, and beautiful, but oh how dumb. Left to go their own way, many varieties are killed by frost each year just when they've started to bloom. But you can fool them into becoming the showgirls of your garden in an extravaganza that opens as early as August.

Fruit From Your Own Tree

IT ALWAYS delights visitors the way we Californians can step outdoors and pick a dozen kinds of fruit off our own trees. "Boy," they'll sigh, gulping down a mouthful of rich juice, "that's one place where you got it over us back home."

A SOUTHWESTERNER Rebuilds

MAYBE you're up a stump like a Henderson, Texas, newspaper editor, G. R. Farmer. Like he was, that is. Or maybe your remodeling problem is different.

Easy to Build ...

A "Campeche Couch" This adaptation of an old Mexican lazy bed will find itself entirely at home in the patio of your Elm Street hacienda. It literally welcomes you with open arms, as the side members swing down to serve as tea table, writing desk, or magazine shelf.

Poison Ivy

EVERYBODY talks about Poison Ivy and all too many get into it. Hundreds of cases walk into doctors' offices every year. This is all so unnecessary.

Built the Way You Want It

IF YOU'VE ever spent much time on the Cape, you know that Cape Cod houses with brick fronts are about as numerous as cactus in a cranberry bog.

Article

You & Son, Partners

ALTHO Jackie R. is only a high-school freshman, he's getting an education in finance that too many college graduates have missed. For Jack's father recently created for him a sizable insurance estate thru a new form of policy that's interesting parents, rich uncles, and fond grandfathers everywhere.

Furniture Styles AND HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM

FURNITURE plays such an important role in the beauty and comfort of our homes that it's natural for us to long to understand it better than we do. And contrary to a lot of preconceived notions, it's not hard at all to learn the characteristics and histories of the leading furniture styles. For every style of every period has its own particular individuality, heritage, and signposts by which it can be recognized.

The Whatnot Returns

WHATNOTS, those decorative little dust-collectors of crinoline days, are back again-- still a job to keep clean, we'll admit, but beloved nevertheless.

AMONG OURSELVES

Tom Thumb, the Bewitcher: Remember the Texas girl that Tom Thumb, our Bildcost No. 603A, bewitched-- and the lovely little home she made out of it? Nan-- her last name is Wright-- is still receiving letters and visitors as a result of the publicity (see BH&G-- November, 1939, page 16); and now a big nursery has been so bewitched by the place that it's landscaping it and surrounding it with flowers, gratis. Miss Wright announces that she's had some nice fun, but that this is the mostest of the nicest she's ever had.

Where's the Garage Door?

THERE are any number of good points about this house, the most interesting of which is the garage door treatment. You may want to borrow some of the ideas.

PUT YOUR Garden on the Map

EVERYBODY says a garden is where you forget. By that they imply you go there to forget unrequited love and the mean things Aunt Jennie said and things like that.

$10 Cured Our Dining-Room

GRIMLY we surveyed our new dining-room-- new to us, but old to the neighbors. Here our cherished Early-American dining set must go. It was enough to give one the horrors.

Little White House Under an Oak Tree

ONCE upon a time if you woke up from a Rip Van Winkle sleep and found yourself in front of a little white house with a picket fence, all under a big tree, you'd have sworn you were in New England.

Baby Clinic

Nature Gets the Speed-Up

BY WETTING stems and soaking seeds with solutions of a mysterious drug, colchicine (pronounced kol'chi-seen), plant breeders are now able to take short-cuts thru the processes of Nature and make varieties never before seen.

Article

I KNOW one home-builder who said "Phf-ff-t-t" to the old saying about its not being possible to have your cake and eat it, too.

Three Wings on a Garden

Ice-Cream Toppings

South vs. North

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

When the 6-year-old was an infant I taught him to punch me in the nose as hard as he could. Now I've had to buy him a punching bag to wean him away from that habit.

ALONG THE GARDEN PATH

TO PREVENT HANGING BASKETS from drying too fast, place a pottery saucer in the bottom of the basket after the moss and before earth is put in. Saucers thus placed hold moisture to last several days, and can't be seen.-- Mrs. William Melvin, S. C.

THE Question Before the House

The source of hot-water supply, either the boiler or tank, is made of rustable metal. The remedy is to replace with a tank of non-rustable material, such as monel metal.

"More Dollars ant Sense in Home-Planning"

Quickest Garden for People in a Hurry

IMPATIENT, that's you. You rent your home. You've just built a new home. You've just built a new fence around your old home. You want a quick garden-- a quick vine climbing the chimney, a quick hedge, quick shade for the pergola-- all things you can enjoy this year.

IT'S NEWS TO ME!

1 This Take-Along outing chair, that sets up in a jiffy, is carried in its own back panel, and weighs but 7 pounds. The oak frame, metal braced, has khaki or colorful-fabric backrest and wide seat; $3.50. "Take-Along" Travel Chair Co., Inc., Thomasville, Georgia.