August 1941

TO A BUTTERFLY

THE DIARY OF A PLAIN DIRT GARDENER

In the bright morning sunlight I sallied forth --playing hooky from my typewriter-- to view my new marigolds, the camera about my neck in approved style. I viewed them and made color shots to keep their happy faces fresh in memory long after they've gone.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

On a hot day my neighbors can seldom get me enthused with even the most brilliant comment on how hot it is.... I'm willing to let the thermometer monopolize that kind of conversation.

Your Health Plan

SCIENCE, mobilized for the national emergency, has confronted the nation with a breath-taking, almost unbelievable proposal. We Americans can, if we have the will to, become the healthiest, strongest, most disease-free people on the face of this earth!

Hey, lazy guy! Here's a Garden That Takes Care of Itself

THERE comes a time in every busy man's life when he gets plain sick of weeding and transplanting and wishes to heaven his garden would take care of itself for a change.

MANSION IN THE MOUNTAINS

YOU red-blooded die-hards with the three-day stubble and the muddy boots will have to wipe your feet and lower your voices when you come in here-- you're stepping into a cabin that looks like a cabin, but lives like a mansion!

10 Commandments FOR BANISHING YOUR GARDEN PESTS

NOT counting dawdling dogs, cute kittens, Junior's rabbits, and the neighbor's chickens-- there are more than 100,000 pests that can drive a gardener crazy.

Some Like Them Hot.. Some Like Them Cold!

Revitalize Your Lawn This Month

AUGUST is the month to build into your lawn the extra energy it needs to carry it over winter. Grass, especially bluegrass, makes its main growth in the cool months and from now on it can make good use of a complete plant food.

Tradition With a Grain of Salt!

This Bildcost's a Cape Cod in Concrete

BUILD a Cape Cod home of precast blocks? Unheard of! What Cape Cod resident in his right mind would ever have built of anything but the plentiful wood that grew so close at hand? Besides, to those old- timers, masonry was a matter of bricks and stones-- the many different types of man- made blocks we use nowadays would have made a Cape Codder's eyes bug out a mile!

How to Attract Butterflies to Your Garden

ONE of these fragrant clear days, rich with the wine of midsummer flowers in the air, there's likely to be a storm of brown Monarch butterflies in the old tree above the birdbath. The children will come running to you, lifting up their wonder-filled faces, tugging at you to come and see what they've discovered-- a cloud of soundless wings with dainty hovering forms, intent upon who knows what strange rites and appetites?

Let's Style With Paint

Hide-away Home OF A FAMOUS ARTIST

You half expect an artist's home to have that rarefied "I'm living-in-another-world" atmosphere. But you certainly don't find it in the home of Pruett Carter, famous artist whose magnificent illustrations you see regularly in the country's leading magazines. The Pruett Carter house isn't "odd" or "arty" at all. You feel completely at home and love it at first meeting, because of its straightforward friendliness, its enchanting warmth, its sheer livability both inside and out.

FURNITURE for today and Tomorrow

WHAT do you suppose your great-grandchildren will think of that chair or table you bought today? Not that it's vitally important. After all, you're the one who's surely going to live with it. But if you love-- as I know you do-- the few precious heirlooms that have trickled down to you thru your family, you're bound to wonder sometimes just which of your own purchases will one day be similarly treasured by your children's children's children.

AS Relaxed AS AN OLD PAIR OF GARTERS

Soda Fountain Fun at Home

TAKE THIS Refrigerator Refresher

A Meal-in-a-Tomato!

FIRST place palate-tanger in our contest for Tomato-y Salads and Old-Timey "Spreads" announced last January is "Meaty Tomato Salad," proud entry of Mrs. B. C. Philips, of Washington, D. C. For it --$5 and a big hand! Page 47 features this tomato fatty, chock-full of hammy goodness, eggs, vegetables.

SPARTA has nothing ON US

WE NEVER dreamed it could happen to us! Only yesterday, happy and secure, we drifted along our several ways in brave, free America, peaceful and prosperous. A suggestion that Uncle Sam might want to borrow our sons for a while would have been ridiculed.

TONE UP WITH THE "Daily Defense Dozen"

Breathing Exercise Rotate arms in small circles, slowly inhaling and exhaling deeply. Speed up circular motion, inhaling and exhaling once for each revolution. Slow down arm motion and breathing gradually. Perform for 20 to 30 seconds, then rest for a moment. Repeat five times.

THERE'S Decorative Value in Little Treasures

IF YOU haven't done it before, do it now! Dig out your small treasures in bric-a-brac, knickknacks, and art objects and put them to work for you. Don't let these precious possessions sulk in bureau drawers or dark closets-- turning up only during housecleaning upheavals.

Business after Pleasure

YOU might have done it all differently. And in your way, you'd have been just as right as we believe we were in ours. Circumstances alter the case, they say. Individuals do things individually. So it's all a matter of taste and purpose.

They Live in the Past-Today's-Way

HERE'S a perfect compromise, a "have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too" house. It came into being when the F. G. Fergusons, of Decatur, Illinois, asked Architects Charles Harris and Rodney Spangler, also of Decatur, to design an authentic Early American house for them.

A Glass Wall Opens Up Our Little Dining-Room

HOW we used to glare at the one small off-center window in our dining-room, wrathfully yearning for more light, more air, and a view! Right then began our daydream of the French-doors-with-a-terrace.

IT'S news TO ME!

Here's the Lay-Z-Sprayer (at right, above) to make insect spraying easy. Just lay the tank on the lawn, or in a flower bed, vegetable garden, or under orchard trees. The extra long, 6-foot hose and 2-foot nozzle let you move about at will. Nozzle adjusts for a fine mist or a 30-foot stream, lets you spray the top of fruit trees without climbing a ladder.