June 1953

Ready your car for summer driving

Preparing for your summer vacation should certainly include a complete checkup for the family car. It's a good idea to have this checkup made a week or 10 days before you start a trip. Then, if there are additional adjustments to be made after the car has been driven, you'll have time to make them. This will reduce the possibility of having to stop at a strange garage along the way.

You can't beat poppies for color

Oriental poppies are the peacocks of the late-May and early-June perennial flower border. Though they appear dependably and on schedule, their splendor never fails to thrill.

Keep your old refrigerator, too

When you buy a big; new refrigerator, think twice before you trade in your old one. It's paid for, and it can be a tremendous bargain in easy living and convenience.

Have you heard the Latest Garden News?

Immersing wilted cut flowers in cold water seldom revives them. But cut the ends of the stems and immerse them in hot water-- about as hot as your hand can stand-- and flowers should revive quickly.

How will we fight polio this year?

There were more than 55,000 cases of polio in the United States in 1952, the worst year in polio history. What is the prospect for 1953?

Not just any port in a storm

Relaxed living in a small house

Take this month's Five Star home from its breath-taking setting in the Black Hills of South Dakota and you have a sound, two-bedroom house that will serve the year round in any location.

Color--when and where you want it

Living-room comfort out-of-doors

Make yours a garden porch

British Columbia

British Columbia is a chunk of the good earth that embraces the entire Pacific Coast of Canada. Bigger by 50,000 square miles than Oregon, Washington, and California combined, it has king-size scenery to match-- 7,000 miles of fiords in the west, glaciers and snow-capped peaks in the east, and forest-edged valleys in between.

Have a new home--inside

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

"I thought you told me once," grumbled Junior as, batching it for an evening, he and I finally donned aprons and tackled the dinner dishes, "that a boy who was tied to his mother's apron strings never got into hot water.,"

High style at low cost June bouquets

You can have a Bright kitchen eatspot

Head start on mealtime with a freezer

Yes, meal-fixing goes fast when you just open the freezer door, take your choice, of home-grown peas or corn, chicken or pork chops, the family's favorite cake or pie.

CONTEST FOR COOKS

THERE'S $70 waiting for the good cooks who send us the prizewinning recipes for cranberries, and turkey and chicken leftovers. We'll pay the first-prize winner $10. The 20 other winners will receive $3 each. Eight of the winning recipes will be pictured in Better Homes & Gardens Prize Tested Recipe pages next January.

This month's winners

Pretty punches for summer parties

Here's a comfortable little garden

Try big scale in a small room

Let's plan a place to store books

Don't forgot his hats and shoes!

New uses for old furniture

Clever garden tool house

Linen closet

"I don't have enough room in my linen closet!" is a familiar cry in every household. With modern homes and apartments having reduced space due to cost and design, the modern homemaker finds that miscellaneous household articles are stuffed into the already-overloaded linen closet.

Help your children to like people

The average American parent is eager to give his offspring the so-called advantages. We expose them to dancing lessons and music lessons. We scurry them to the best skin doctors when the bumps of adolescence appear. We cheerfully sacrifice to buy their vitamins and bicycles and clothes "like the other kids wear."

How to work with dowels

We built this house!

That living-room traffic jam

Their 22x12-foot living room had to do too many jobs. It had to serve not only as a living, dining, and television room, but also as a hallway serving the entire house.

Corner-wise television

Etiquette for you and the bride

Everyone loves a bride. She's the center of all wedding preparations. But if you're a friend, mother, father, relative, or relative-to-be, you've an important part to play in the success of the wedding. The better you know how to proceed, the easier it will be on the bride, and the more blithely you'll glide through the whole affair.

Room for family fun

Help yourself to handsome rooms

Get the most from your child's doctor

"No, no, no, no," the 18-months-old baby screams as he struggles on the doctor's examination table. He twists, turns, and kicks out violently to shake loose from restraining hands, all the time crying lustily. He puts out his hands entreatingly and shouts, "Mommy, Mommy."

Grow man-size lilies from seed

Ever wish you had great, white, gorgeous trumpet lilies in your garden? Then try dependable Formosa lilies-- Wilson's variety of Lilium formosanum. Characteristically tall and late-flowering, they achieve triumphant blooming size. You have to look up to them!

Eyecatching aprons

Take your pick-- or make all five! Every one can be made from a half circle of fabric. Each is so easy to cut out that you won't need a pattern.

Yon can move shrubs in full bloom!

Low-cost tables you can make

Get more bloom from your tuberous begonias

Want more-- and better-- tuberous begonia blooms? Then plant where they get plenty of light.

Relax with the July issue

Settle yourself in your favorite chair in front of the fan. Or pick a nice, shady spot in the yard to sit down with the July issue of Better Homes & Gardens as soon as it arrives. We've planned lots of features to help you forget the heat and really enjoy the summer.

Two modest houses that look like a lot

Design gives a tiny garden style

Easy outdoor eating

Try concrete garden paving

Concrete is durable, easy to keep clean, and attractive. You can color it. And you can combine concrete, as these pictures show, with many other paving materials. So consider concrete when you're deciding what paving to use for the new terrace, walk, drive, or play yard you are planning to have.

Plants for shade

The diary of a Plain dirt gardener.

June 1 "Do you know what time it is?" asked Maggie, as she came down the path.

Now's the time to...

Adjust mower to clip bluegrass lawn at 1½ inches. Cut faded bloom heads from your lilac, azalea, and rhododendron shrubs, and remove any old lilac stems that have produced small, inferior blooms this season.

Enjoy a garden free of insects

Modern chemical "warfare" and your own common sense. Together, they make it possible for you to defeat two mighty irritating pests: mosquitoes and chiggers.