I N D FA LLS. 



372 



Cream of Cclei-y. — Wash and scrape a head of celery, 

 and put it into one pint of boiling salted water. When it 

 is boiled soft, mash it fine in the water, and pass through 

 a soup strainer. Turn this into a pint of hot milk that 

 has been thickened by having a tablespoonful of flour 

 wet with cold milk cooked in it. Add a teaspoonful of 

 salt, a teaspoonful of pepper, a tablespoonful of onion 

 juice (if liked), and, lastly, a tablespoonful of butter. 

 As soon as the butter is melted, give the soup a quick 

 and thorough stirring, and serve hot. 



Preservation of Fruits. — It is the healthy, well- 

 developed, and in most instances, the well-matured 

 fruit, that keeps best and keeps longest. The conditions 

 required are that the fruit be healthy, that is, free from 

 wounds, bruises or infections caused by insects, or 

 climatic influences ; anything contrary to perfect sound- 

 ness introduces the process of decay, which is the 

 inevitable order of all vegetable matters after perfect 

 maturity has been reached. 



The conditions necessary to bring about this perfect 

 state of the fruit are, that the fruit must be grown on 

 rich, congenial soil, in its proper season, and given suf- 

 ficient time to fully develop itself ; but not in every 

 case to fully mature all its qualities, for with many 

 kinds of fruits, this must be checked in order to retard 

 decay In other words, some fruits must be fully ripened 

 on the parent bough, while some must be gathered 

 before fully ripe to prevent loss of flavor and early 

 decay. 



To have fruit keep well is of as much importance as 

 that of plenteous production, and, indeed, more so, be- 

 cause it is only that which is preserved and got into 

 market that brings the profits; hence the importance, 

 when growing fruit, of ever keeping in view the condi- 

 tions necessary to its hardness and keeping qualities. 



Some soils and localities, even on the same farm or 

 premises, may not be adapted or suited to certain kinds 

 of fruit ; where this is the case, the fruit, to some extent, 

 is not well developed, and its power to resist decay is 

 weakened, hence it is so important to understand 

 something of the requirements of the fruit to be planted, 

 the soil or peculiar situation best adapted to its growth, 

 also the proper time it should be planted, and the culti- 

 vation it should have. 



Fruit growers who know and understand these condi- 

 tions and requirements, and are careful to comply with 

 them, seldom fail to have their fruit keep well. 



For exemplification, if sweet potatoes, which are very 

 difficult to keep, be grown on warm, rich, loose soil, 

 planted early enough to grow and fully mature before 

 frost touches the vines, then dug when the ground is 

 dry, that they may be dry and clean, then laid in a 

 dark, cool room, or at once stored away in a frost-proof 

 cellar or store-house, and spread out in shallow boxes, 

 with a light covering of sand, all the time handling so 

 as not to bruise them, they will seldom fail not to keep 

 well ; but any infringement on these conditions, planted 

 too late, or in cold, wet soil, or dug before matured, or 

 bruised, or kept too warm, too wet, or frozen, all alike, 



will insure injury, if not ruin. This example, though 

 of rather more than usual difficulty, serves to show that 

 proper growing, as well as proper harvesting and stor- 

 age, are all alike necessary to insure preservation. 



With most kinds of fruits, it is better to gather them 

 just when, or before fully ripe, because most fruits from 

 this point on begin to lose in flavor, and incipient 

 decay sets in. This is to be prevented by gathering and 

 removing from atmospheric changes to a lower temper- 

 ature, which arrests the ripening process and the loss of 

 flavor, and for a time holds the fruit in what we may 

 term a dormant state. 



The place of storage seems to require about these 

 conditions: A uniform temperature, perhaps that is 

 safest between 35 and 40 degrees ; no changes or spores 

 are likely to be active here; the room dark, or nearly 

 so, and so damp that moisture will not escape, and the 

 air just active enough to prevent stagnation. — James I. 

 Baird, Ky. 



Gardening Around Washington. — No two cities 

 could be more unlike than the two capitals, London and 

 Washington ; one a great commercial and manufacturing 

 city, the other a quiet place where the representatives 

 of a busy nation retire to transact the public business. 



In landscape gardening, and all that appeals to 

 refined and cultivated taste, Washington is fast be- 

 coming the rival of the leading capitals of the old 

 world. Thanks to ex-Governor Shepherd, its streets 

 and parks are equal to the finest to be found anywhere. 

 Its suburbs, which yet can hardly be said to exist, are 

 likely to become equally attractive. The purchase of a 

 suburban residence by President Cleveland, and the 

 recent provision by Congress, for two national parks 

 within the district, have awakened an interest in this 

 direction, and many fine private residences with tasteful 

 surroundings are being erected on the heights which 

 surround the city. 



The increased number of people of wealth and taste 

 who have made their home in Washington in recent 

 years, has caused the growth of the florists' business to 

 assume comparatively large proportions, several enter- 

 prisingfirms, doing a profitable business, havmg extensive 

 greenhouses near the city. With fruit and market gar- 

 dening, however, and even ordinary farming, the case is 

 diflferent. Washington obtains its supplies mainly from 

 outside sources. Its meats are mostly from Chicago ; 

 its hay and grain is much of it from the prairies of 

 Illinois and Iowa, while even the bedding for its fine 

 horses often consists of turf imported from the bogs of 

 Ireland. The finer fruits, in immense quantities, are 

 brought from Florida and California, while apples 

 come, in ordinary seasons, mainly from New York, and 

 small fruits and vegetables from Norfolk and other 

 points along the coast. 



One of the causes for this condition of things lies in 

 the character of the soil around Washington. The red 

 clay hills of Virginia and Maryland are poorly adapted 

 to give the best results in market gardening and fruit 

 growing, while long continued cropping under misman- 



