March 1946

God Bless Our Traveling

WE WONDERED why Ed and Nancy, both blonde, peppy, and chronically hungry for novel experiences, new faces, and strange scenery, should decide to spend their first vacation in three years on the shores of the same old lake. As long as we've known them, they've packed their vacation duds in the car and headed for this nearby resort with monotonous regularity-- and about as much enthusiasm as a 9-year-old looking forward to the opening of the fall school term.

SHOP TALK

Flowerlets float and flame, bring blossomtime to your table. They're hand-carved, tinted and perfumed with fairyland delicacy. Make a lily pond for a spring centerpiece by adding leaves from house plants. Float single candles in tiny salt or nut dishes at each place. Pretty for birthday tables.

Who Can Get Building Materials?

EVERYONE who plans to build, repair, or remodel a house is affected by Priorities Regulation 33 of the Civilian Production Administration. It became effective January 15 and provides that:

New Mechanical Core Is Hub for House

What I Learned From a Baby

I HAVE just been attending school. It is the oldest school-- a universal school. Its entrance requirement is only this: that one be willing to learn. Its lessons are not found in any book; the results of its teaching are expressed only in the conduct of life. Language barriers do not exist for it; nor race, nor creed, nor money, nor pride. Whoever will may learn its lessons.

Are You Paying Too Much Income Tax?

THE evening is bitter cold. Biting drops of freezing rain, whipped by a northwest gale, glaze the highway and sheath your windshield with ice. Your caution is unavailing. Suddenly the car skids into a crazy spin, jarring to a stop with a sickening crunch.

Their Home Is All the Things They Like

WHAT happens when a house is planned, not to conform to a set room arrangement, or period, or color scheme, but to express home to the people who live in it?

Are You Growing Old Needlessly?

MY MOTHER and I sat in the doctor's office awaiting the fateful verdict. A robust woman of 69 a year ago, she had wasted away to an ashen shadow from a disease that earlier doctors, shaking their heads, had diagnosed as cancer of the stomach.

ABC's of Decorating Accessories

For Privacy on an Inside Lot

TO A young veteran returned from the wars, to a couple filled with wonder over a newborn son, to a middle-aged father and mother after children have grown and gone, home means far more than a place to eat and sleep. It represents deep, satisfying security, carefree hours with friends, evenings of quiet peace by the fireside.

More Color Out Front

EVERYBODY notices the place that turns a gay face to the passerby-- where there's always something in bloom. Especially on the small place, to put flowers between the house and the street is the sensible, the smart, and the effective thing to do. Then all of the space back of the house can be devoted, if you like, to the business of living, to play equipment, or you can give the sunnier portions to fruit and vegetables.

YOUR LAWN

YOU'D like your lawn to look the way lawns do in the grass-seed advertisements. Your house would look better if it did. Your garden would look better if it did.

Is Group Building a Good Gamble?

IN QUIET, suburban Winchester, Massachusetts, which is just eight miles out of Boston, four families built their homes side by side just before the war. The unusual thing about the building was that it was a cooperative affair, planned and carried thru from the very beginning by all four families.

What if You Must Live in a Garage?

IT BEARS faint resemblance to a garage now. But that's what it was-- a red-brick double garage, nearly 20 years old-- when Ambrose and Marion Potter of Chicago saw in it the answer to their housing problem.

New for Gardens

Here Are the 1946 Home Freezers

CAN IT be less than 10 years since you first exclaimed over the garden-green of frozen peas, the just-out-of-the-patch flavor of frozen Lima beans? Today frozen foods are an accepted part of meal planning; and the equipment whereby every home can freeze and store its own supply is the subject of wishful thought in many a mind.

Confessions of a Father

I STILL recall the night nearly a year ago when Dot and I decided to try the experiment. We had just moved into our new house-- new to us anyway-- and were sitting on the porch watching the moon's ribbon on the pond that bordered our back garden. The thrill of ownership, the magic of the night did things to us.

Cash for Remodelers!

The Gentle Art of Boxing

EVER turn a room upside down in 30 seconds flat looking for the clothes brush and a clean handkerchief and a 3-cent stamp-- with just a minute to make the bus downtown? If you haven't, we'll bet the husband or youngsters have. That's where "boxing" comes in-- a gentle art for a slapdash sport.

Your Child--Handy or Handicapped?

"HERE, let me do that, Frances; I can do it better than you can." My 9-year-old was baking a cake --her first cake-- for Daddy's birthday.

Asparagus--Dual-Purpose Plant

AN ASPARAGUS bed can in one and the same summer do a whale of a job of pleasing both your palate and your beauty-loving eye. Asparagus tips cut within the hour they're consumed are luxury items common only to those who grow their own.

Where Common Names Confuse

MOST people shy away from scientific or botanical names for their flowers as "too hard" or "confusing." They don't realize that common names are all too often even more confusing because they are too common, too localized.

Grow These to Freeze

SUCCESS in freezing fruits and vegetables-- colorful, delicious products-- starts with selecting the proper varieties for freezing. Since these varieties are also top-quality as fresh products, any surplus not frozen can be eaten as fresh fruits and vegetables.

The Homemaker Is an Artist

JUDY and I were friends back in school days and have lived in the same small town all our lives. But right there the similarity stops.

Make Your Own Brick Walk

The Man Next Door

Yes, it's a rearguard action that parents must fight with their modern children nowadays. ... Fortunately, just as the youngsters are about to get the upper hand they get married, and soon go on the defensive themselves.

Seed-Starting Simplified

DO YOU hesitate to start your own plants from seed because in the past your seedlings suddenly fell over soon after they came up? Forget it! Now-- thanks to rediscovery of the sterile qualities of sphagnum moss-- anyone can grow seedlings free from damping-off diseases. Here's how:

Tricks of the Flower Trade

FLOWER time is almost here again. Make ready-- get out your bowls, sharpen your cutters, brush up on short cuts that simplify flower-fixing. Put all of your flower-arranging tools and accessories in a special cabinet close to the sink where you usually fix your blooms. And remember some of these useful tricks of the trade; they'll give your arrangements a professional touch.

Room Aloft

Tree Peonies

TREE peonies-- they're really shrubs four feet high and sometimes five across-- are aristocrats among peonies. Tho somewhat slow, they're not hard to grow. Flowers can be expected by the time the plants are 3 years old. And the plants burst into bloom two weeks before the herbaceous peonies are ready.

Delphiniums Start Early

DELPHINIUMS spend little time sleeping. Many of them produce a second crop of flowers in the fall, then rest only during the coldest months. In most regions, active growth is resumed in March or earlier. Fortunately, delphiniums are hardy and seldom damaged by the coldest weather even when not protected by a mulch.

This Garage Grew Storage Space

Article

Pest Killers De Luxe

I've Flowers to Give

Garden Information, Please

Article

Grape Ties

Article

Here's an Idea!

Along the Garden Path

March Gardening Guide

AMBITIOUS gardeners are out and rarin' to go the minute March winds have dried the lawn enough so that a full-grown adult, equipped with overshoes, can stay on top.

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

March I Now our weatherman was downright reasonable today. So when worktime came, I ambled out with pruning shears and lopping shears and did my duty on hedge and shrubs.

Debutantes After Dark

SO YOU'D like a garden you can enjoy evenings when your work is done. A little dark garden lit only by flowers gleaming whitely under the moon and stars. A little garden of peace and sweet fragrance.

Young Mothers' Exchange

DAMP, spring days are coming, when many mothers will find themselves with a fretful young invalid on their hands. Patience often wears thin as the child too young to understand medicine balks at an unfamiliar taste or smell, or an older child resents the monotony of having to stay in bed and plaintively "wants to be amused."

It's NEWS to Me!