April 1944

Delinquent Children--or Parents?

YEARS ago when the boy in the corner house was a little fellow, he left his scooter in the street at night. It was, of course, run over and destroyed. Altho the child had been told to bring the toy to the house in the evening, his father, sympathizing with the boy's distress, bought him another scooter, better and shinier than the old one.

LATE TIPS ON Wartime Living

Chester Bowles, OPA chief, sends this message to Victory gardeners: "I hope no one will be misled regarding the food situation. All who can possibly use products from their own gardens, either fresh or canned, certainly should do so."

I Buried My Grief

I HEARD by cable of the sudden and tragic death of my only sister, in a far country.

Garden Newcomers You'll Like

TRIED out for the first time in many gardens last year, Oakleaf Lettuce already has a name for adding something new and better in lettuce flavors, and for keeping crisp for weeks after other early leaf lettuces run to seed. Its color is darker than Grand Rapids or Black-seeded Simpson, which makes it a quick choice for tossed salads.

YOUR TAX ASSESSMENT--Muddle or Model?

"HERE comes the assessor!" is the warning cry that leads normally honest property-owners to invent hasty and unconvincing stories. The house that was its owner's pride an hour before is now a termite-ridden wreck, structurally unsound, and of low value. That, at least, is how it goes in all the best jokes.

Got Space for Sweet Corn?

SOME of our hard-headed citizens argue that home gardeners have no business growing sweet corn. No other crop eats space so rapidly, they say, and production per square foot is hardly worth the time and effort involved.

Cabbage Is Your No. 1 Green

UNTIL someone figures out a way to freeze or can lettuce, cabbage will continue to be the most important of all the green leafy vegetables grown at home. You may be able to store a few plants of celery-cabbage and endive until early January, but you must depend upon the durable cabbage for most of your home-grown salads after frost.

You'll Feel Better Tomorrow

IT'S going to be safer to be sick tomorrow. Not that it will ever be fun, but it's a comfort to know that war has stimulated medical science to tremendous strides. One of the plus values of our War Bond purchases is that the superb medical care we buy for our fighting men stands ready to aid our own families.

PERENNIALS THAT GIVE Color all Summer

YOU'LL find a border of perennials a good investment because you'll get so many repeat performances. Once planted, it'll always look furnished. And with some advance planning, it's easy to have bloom all summer.

VICTORIAN REVIVAL

WE'RE shopping for furniture in Mother's attic and turning our finds into beauties. That's what this Victorian revival really stems from-- today's furniture shortage and our country's need for our dollars. Victorian isn't stuffy at all. It's fun to live with.

PENNY-WISE TIPS FROM THE HOME OF Susie Cucumber

SUSIE CUCUMBER, you see, is a dog-- a friendly little fox terrier you'll meet in these photographs-- and an idea in herself. Susie writes letters to children. Cynthia Richardson, Susie's mistress, does the ghosting, sending Susie's doggy thoughts to youngsters under 10 who love to get letters.

IDEAS FOR PERKING EP Your Slip-Covers

Breezeways for Your Scrapbook

The Fun Room We Built of Pine

OH! FOR a vacation in the pine woods," lots of folks are saying these days when the family automobile's being weaned and goes out on an urgent-business-only basis.

Spring Tang for Your Between-Season Meals

WINTER'S a has-been; spring's a not-yet. Meal-making is a between-season puzzle. Let's show those families of ours we can solve it--delectably.

Machine Mending's Quick and Easy

Football Hold for Baby

DID you ever see a nurse going along a hospital corridor with somebody's precious new baby slung nonchalantly under her arm, and did you gasp?

Help Yourself to Household Helps

NEED a quick lift on your spring cleaning? Sometimes just one idea will jog you into action and inspire smooth results. These are favorite tips of other Better Homes & Gardens families-- cleaning ideas, paint tricks, mending tips. All are effort-savers. Help yourself!

Let's Have Folks In

Come for Sunday breakfast. Get-together Sunday breakfasts are great fun, easy on the points, quick and simple doing. Invite your guests for any hour you elect. Wonderful coffee (and lots of it), fresh oven rolls or hot toast made at the table, and some sort of chilled fruit or vegetable juice are musts.

Which Phase Is Your Child In?

"WHEN should my baby start walking and talking and all the other things he'll be doing? I wish I could know what's ahead. It would make things so much easier, it seems to me."

It's the Pay-Off for Eggs

YOU got the idea eggs-actly! Those airy white and golden cakes you told us how to bake, and those dish-of-the-meal eggs in delightful ways made our mouths water, our kitchen-testers turn on their best efforts, our tasting-judges puzzle days over which was best of so much goodness.

Smart Stunts With Linoleum Leftovers

Young Mothers' Exchange

HOW young must you be to be a young mother? Mrs. M. S. brings up that slightly technical question. She says she'd like to join the Young Mothers' Exchange because she has a new baby, but she's the incredibly ancient age of 35! So she wishes we'd call it the New Mothers' Exchange, instead.

MEET Little Luscious

IF I could have but one houseplant, I'd choose gloxinias. Their leaves are hairy, plush-like, deep-veined, some tinted bronze, some red, some ruffly edged. Blooms range from purest white thru pink and rose to red, crimson, and purple.

DO YOU HAVE These Pleasant Thymes?

OUR herb garden is laid out formally to match the nearby annual garden, but cozily tucked in behind a hedge over which the sun comes tumbling all day long, and in whose shade the tarragon, chervil, cowslips, and sweet violets, and sweet woodruff grow thriftily.

Button, Button I've Got Buttons!

SAY, there's a funny old button--let's send it to Marie! (Or whatever her first name is.)

"Home Sweet Home" in "the Good Old Days"

IN THE Seventeenth Century, the only privacy the lord and his lady enjoyed at night was that gained by drawing the heavy curtains around their great four-poster tester bed when they retired in the same room with the lord's knights! If the wife then took occasion to speak her mind on some misdemeanor of her spouse, she was said to be "giving him a curtain lecture."

INCREASING YOUR War-Bond "Plus"

LIKE almost everyone else, Mark H. gladly puts 10 percent of his pay into War Savings Bonds every week and wishes like blazes he was buying even more. Well, in a way he is! Figures compiled late in 1943 by the Institute of Life Insurance estimate that altho the outright per-family ownership of War Bonds is around $557, the per-family equity in the various war loans really amounts to about $1,275.

How to Teach THRIFT To Your Children

THRIFT AND SAVING-- these revered guideposts on the way to independence-- are still good as far as they go, but in our changing economic world they are no longer all the guidance needed for the young persons who will some day be setting out to make their way in the world.

"I Say Gardening Should Be Fun"

ACCEPT everything anyone offers to give you the first year. If it dies, the donor will forgive you on account of your inexperience. If it lives, you can either treasure it, or pull it up next year, or give it to somebody else who doesn't know what it is either.

JAUNTY TWO-DECKERS

Want to lend a fetching air to a short window that otherwise would be pretty unimportant? Then tack thick cotton cord from any drapery department on the edges of your plain net sash curtains. Hang two pairs to the window, or one pair may do it, hung in two panels.

LET'S ARRANGE Easter Flowers

We Dramatized Our Living-Room's "Sore Thumb"

WELL, what would you do with a pair of chunky square windows cut high up and centered in an otherwise barren living-room wall? You may even have a couple of these old-timers in your home today. Builders called them "piano windows," and expected you to plant your upright directly beneath them.

April Outdoor Gardening Guide

WARM April showers set into action quantities of stored-up energy in bulbs, perennials, roots, and woody plants. This month a lot of vegetable seeds go into the ground. And this is just the time of year to provide protection against diseases carried by soil, garden trash, and seeds. Peony leaf blight, delphinium leaf spot, and hollyhock rust can all be greatly reduced or entirely controlled by the use of early sprays.

Portable Picket Fence

Beets--You Eat Them From Top to Tip

THE HOG became famous for having no waste to him but his squeal. If publicists ever go to work on the beet, they'll find it has no waste at all, not even a squeal. It's 100 percent efficient.

DAD'S Practical Pointers

Before storing a can of paint, pour melted paraffin over the surface to prevent a skin forming. The paraffin is easily lifted off when the paint is needed.-- E. R. S., Nebr.

Disappearing Clothes Yard

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

April 2 B-r-r-r-- the temperature dropped to 30 degrees this dark morning. Flecks of snow in air.

Article

Along the Garden Path

Try peanuts this summer. I grew a bushel from 5 cents worth of raw peanuts planted like beans in a row. After the blossoms came slender brown growths called pegs which soon buried themselves into the ground. When frost came, I found big jumbo peanuts at the end of each one. C. H. Miller, Conn.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Two of the most flabbergasting questions: "What did you learn in school?" and "What did you do all day?" One day children and wives should prepare a journal with 15-minute entries and just lie in ambush for the classic queries.

It's NEWS to Me!

Herb seeds. Plant fragrant herbs now to do taste-teasing things to salads and hot dishes the year around. Your favorite seedsman may have herb seeds.