March 1948

Thank heaven for spring!

FIRST come the the snowdrops and squills and crocuses, then daffodils and forsythia. After that it's pretty much your own choice-- violets in the lowland, dandelions on the lawn, seedling flats in the window, scallions in the hotbed. Spring is here at last.

This year yon can dry house-clean

To avoid scrubbing floors: A longhandled, mop-like device makes it unnecessary to scrub wood floors and linoleum on your hands and knees. Using its own liquid waxbase dry cleaner, the device cleans, waxes, and polishes. You pour floor cleaner on wood floor or linoleum, and rub back and forth with long-handled applicator

Spring pruning guide

Grow only the "good eaters"

OF 15 good vegetables for the home garden, here are some of the best-flavored varieties. Start indoors seeds of those marked with an asterisk.

It's SEWS to Me!

An early start on plants means an early harvest of flowers and vegetables. Frame is stainless steel, 24½"x34½"x12" high at back; window is plastic material that lets in beneficial sun rays, filters out burn. Grooves admit light bulb cords in case of freezing weather.

How to plant a rose

Partition off a room

Yon can grow wildflowers

FOR 47 years Senator George D. Aiken of Vermont has been growing wildflowers. He owns a nursery, and he sells hemlock and apple trees and Christmas wreaths and wildflowers to a lot of people. Senator Aiken, who is 55, began growing wildflowers when he was 8. As a boy in Vermont, he had to fetch the cows from pasture. The cows were often in a wooded corner where blossomed spring beauties, hepaticas, bloodroot violets, squirrel corn, and Dutchman's-breeches.

Let color wake up your tired furniture

Remodeling tip: don't go too far

REMODELING has a way of getting out of hand. You're on your own; the dollars are trickling away. Then suddenly it is painfully evident that you're not getting your money's worth.

The best shrubs for a small place

How to set a company table

KEEP center decoration low to permit guests to see one another across table. Use 15- to 20-inch candles to keep flames above eye level.

Here are answers to your most-asked questions on serving

Q. When should guests arrive for a dinner engagement? A. Guests should arrive 5 to 10 minutes before the hour set for dinner. It is unpardonable to arrive late.

His ideas are worth par checking

What makes your home individual?

Put your walls to flowering!

IF YOUR WALL is built in a series of setbacks like the one opposite at upper left, you've an opportunity to plant each ledge with flowers that will swing down and across the laces of the stones, bricks, or concrete blocks.

How to arrange your kitchen

NO ROOM in the house has received more expert attention, produced more theories, been the subject of more advice, than the kitchen.

This house needs little maintenance, fits on a narrow lot, has a fresh, subtle beauty

Hedges--and how to make them work for you

For a greener lawn next August

SPOT-light your kitchen

YOUR kitchen jobs have long since moved from the old kitchen worktable out to the walls of the kitchen. So in addition to adequate central light, you need good light at sink, range, and work counters.

Look what you can do with a cutlery box!

You can cover up with color

how-to helps

It will be a bright spring at your home this year, and you will be working the magic. Yes, you can make light of dull winter living by dressing your home in bright new color. Booklet No. 42, Color in Your Home. 15 cents, will help you plan. And in your planning, don't overlook the role well-dressed windows can play in a decorative scheme. Booklet No. 44, Well-Dressed Windows.

Cooking with canned juices

New recipe contest!

CALLING you cooks who have a delicious banana recipe or cook with soups! For you there's a $70 jackpot waiting, it's easy to try for a cash prize-- just read this announcement, then write your recipe down and mail it to us.

What would improve your washday?

More speed? It will save time to start washday by piling likes together: (1) less-soiled whites, (2) more-soiled whites, (3) light fast colors, (4) dark fast colors, (5) work and play clothes, (6) colors that may run, (7) wools, silks, and rayons for short machine run or hand-washing. Wash likes together and hang likes together so you don't have to reorganize at ironing time.

Easter bunnies

THE Bunny Twins will take you only a few hours to make. They're soft and cuddly. Materials needed: Two skeins of yarn for each (one skein pink or blue four-ply knitting worsted for body, and one skein white chiffon baby yarn for playsuits), a No. 1 bone crochet hook, and two pieces of cardboard.

You can build on the skyscraper principle

How good an amateur architect are yon?

This rambling house fits a 50-foot lot

THE one-story home of Mr. and Mrs. Spiros G. Ponty of Los Angeles is shaped like a U. But it fits on a 50-foot lot.

How to got and keep a baby sitter

THERE'S a definite code of etiquette for parents and baby sitters. It's a code that develops understanding between the mother and the sitter.

Five rules for furnishing a small home

Columbia WINDOW SHADES

The Kohners prove you ran mix periods

Take it off your income tax

STORM damage to your shade trees (like the ice damage in the photographs) is a loss you can deduct on your income tax report.

ENAMELED WARE

How to season with a reason

Green beans from the can or frozen package take on fresh exciting flavor when you add a minced clove of garlic before heating.-- Samela K. Parkhurst, Seattle, Washington.

When the citizens took over the gully

Brand-new bedroom

Steak at 6 weeks?

SOMETHING new is being added to Baby's diet. This something new is meat. At last, even the very young infant is going to get a diet that's really balanced. It has been a long time, of course, since babies were expected to thrive on milk alone. Cod liver oil, orange juice, cereals, and vegetables have been added, one by one.

Let slipcovers rescue your dining-room chairs

Not sick or naughty-- just allergic

IF YOUR child seems to catch one cold after another, or if he frequently develops a little hacking cough and has difficulty breathing, the chances are it has nothing to do with Grandma Jones' weak lungs. Or, if he is quarrelsome and irritable, don't assume an outcropping of Uncle Ned's mean disposition.

EPILEPSY isn't a curse!

HAD Georgie Reims lived in the Middle Ages, he would have been considered bewitched. He might have burned at the stake or had a red-hot poker driven into his skull to let out the evil spirits. As late as the eighteenth century he would have been spat upon and shunned.

Exploding the myths about epilepsy

Pies were popular

Why "antimacassar"

Profitable pie

Who owns your home?

If distemper hits your dog

DISTEMPER time is here! This dread disease goes on its severest rampage in early spring-- when thaws are heaviest, when mud and slush coat the earth, and chill, wet air pierces clear to our very marrow. So a few timely observations and suggestions for the dog owner are in order-- especially those who own young pups.

Born 80 years too soon

How to sharpen a knife

SATURDAY afternoons, when I was a little kid, Dad used to raid Mother's kitchen drawers of all their knives, large and small. With me as the motive power on a hand grindstone clamped to a cellar step, we would put a new edge on the cutlery for the week to come.

How to solder

MOST people get the idea that it requires some very special knowledge and training to solder. Visions come up of expensive equipment. As a matter of fact, any boy can solder, and a boy's allowance of 75 cents a week would cover the necessary equipment.

Are you a walking dictionary?

YOU have finally realized your dream of a 'round-the-world trip. But, how seasoned a globe trotter are you? How many times during the trip will you need to reach for a dictionary? Score 5 for each time you can get by without it. A score of 45 is excellent, 35 is good, and 25-- better you should stay home. What's your score?

Slipcovers: How to choose material pattern trim fasteners

MAKE-DOS and hand-me-downs and just plain comfortable chairs and sofas can be good-looking, too. All you need are several yards of material, a slipcover pattern, and a few hours at your sewing machine.

Hints for the handy man

When you put away your best white shirts, wrap them in blue tissue or well-blued cloth. This keeps them from turning yellow.

Hints for the handy man

If you're painting from a stepladder, use a coat hanger to keep paint from sliding off. Bend the hook so it clamps onto the top of the ladder, then wedge the paint can in the hanger. Even when you move the ladder, the can won't fall.

How large should jour bathroom be?

MODERN plumbing fixtures and colorful accessories don't make a good bathroom. It's the efficient use of space that counts.

Plumbing a Wedgwood By-Product

Why use Chemical plant food?

ONE of the more recent scares has to do with the supposed dangers from using chemical plant foods. The claim is made that these chemicals ruin your soil, kill the useful soil bacteria and fungi, drive away the earthworms, and produce crops responsible for the increasing susceptibility of mankind to disease.

How to graft four trees

WHEN friends visit my garden they marvel that I can grow green, yellow, and red varieties of apples on one tree.

How does your garden grow?

HERE are 10 common vegetables which you probably grow in your garden every year. Each couplet describes a different vegetable. You should have no trouble getting all of them correctly.

MARCH GARDEN GUIDE

MARCH is a busy month for gardens. Spring is here in much of the country. There's still time, tho, in colder areas to make your last application of pest-killer sprays at winter strength.

Scale-killing time is now

MARCH and early April, before the buds open, is the best time to spray for scale insects. While trees and shrubs are dormant, they will stand stronger and more effective sprays.

GARDEN CLINIC

GARDEN CLINIC How to plant a young tree

We landscaped from scratch

WE HAD to buy a house last year to have a place to live. There wasn't much money left to fix up our yard. We had a front lawn, of sorts, but that was all. The back yard rose steeply in a brush-covered wilderness.

THE DIARY OF A Plain Dirt Gardener

March 1 Since it was dead of winter outdoors, this day was devoted to paper work inside headquarters and to contemplation and planning as I worked.

Now it's sweet corn without hoeing

IF YOU'LL plant the right variety, you won't need to weed or cultivate your sweet corn. You can use a new method of controlling weeds-- spraying with 2,4-D, after the corn has been planted but before it shows above ground. This is what experiment station men are calling the 2,4-D pre-emergence spray.

Where to get it

Most items shown in this issue should be available in your local stores. If, however, they are not, for your store's convenience in ordering we list the names of the companies making the items.

Need a nook for breakfast?

To build a trouble-free outdoor fireplace--

Your fireplace goes modern

Nothing New Under the Sun

Thru the Shops

Thru the Shops

Thru the Shops

Is your husband hard to cook for?

UNLESS you are one wife in a thousand, you cook-- and eat-- to satisfy the food habits and prejudices of the man at your house. You seldom consider your own tastes in food, or risk serving something he doesn't like. Grocers say this is true of most women; a dozen grocers were questioned recently, and they agreed unanimously that men decide the meals, and that the average wife is afraid to stray from the straight and narrow path of her husband's likes and dislikes.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Apparently the midwinter bride in our block has made an important discovery in cooking. It is an all-purpose cutlet. So far, she's passed it off as calves' brains, perch, sweetbreads, veal, or shad roe. And my wife reports that at a noon luncheon it also did duty as a chicken patty.