Vol. LXVI. No. 2992. 
WEEKLY, 11.00 PER YE£R. 
NEW YORK, JUNE 1 1907. 
HIDING THE UGLY PLACES. 
The Bread and Buffer Way. 
When one who has always lived in a pleasant coun¬ 
try home where well-cared-for trees, shrubs, vines and 
plants have been planted and grown in orderly profus¬ 
ion, is transferred to an average city property to live, 
he is most likely to meet conditions which will irritate 
a set of nerves of which he never before realized he 
was in possession. Rough, unsightly board fences, un¬ 
painted barns and fearfully and wonderfully made 
chicken coops upon his own recently acquired and 
neighboring back lots, present a maze of 
glaring objects, uncomfortable angles and 
barren, weathered, mildewed surfaces 
which are repulsive in the extreme to one 
whose policy has been to screen from view 
the few unsightly objects about his home, 
with nature’s softening and refining foli¬ 
age and flowers. 
But these unpleasant features of the 
average city back yard seem to be the 
price of leaving behind a well-kept coun¬ 
try home. And the conditions which are 
presented are those which must be met 
and overcome—not endured. The soil 
and sunshine and care bestowed will 
work as great changes in the city as in 
the country, and will enable the tenant, by 
the use of quick-growing vines and plants, 
to surround his temporary home with 
those things which have become neces¬ 
sary to his happiness and contentment. In 
the hands of a skillful planter some won¬ 
derful horticultural transformations take 
place in a hitherto uninviting enclosure. 
And have we not all observed a few coun¬ 
try door-yards, in years past perhaps, 
wherfe a decided change for the better 
might be made by a judicious use of 
fruiting, flowering and ornamental trees 
and vines? Indeed all that might be 
said about unsightly and unattractive 
features of city back-yards will apply 
with equal force to neglected dooryards 
in the country. 
There are many good vines, among our 
climbing annuals, which can be utilized 
to excellent advantage in masking repul¬ 
sive buildings or unsightly or broken 
fences of boards or pickets. The morn¬ 
ing glory family is, perhaps, the most 
popular of all and embraces the common 
type in many colors and combinations of 
colors, the Japanese in various hues and 
markings with equally as various forms 
of deeply cut and lobed foliage, and the 
great saucer-sized moon-flowers, which 
are quite appropriately named. The vig¬ 
orous, riotous wild cucumber is suitable 
for covering large areas of unsightly sur¬ 
faces in the shortest posible space of time, 
while its panicles of small, white flowers, 
freely borne, are very pleasing. The opposite extreme 
is represented by the dainty canary-bird flower with 
its delicate vine and foliage. The cypress, in its various 
forms of foliage and colors of flowers, is justly popular, 
while the taller growing nasturtiums are at once among 
the easiest grown and most beautiful of all. The 
balloon vine, cobsea, ornamental hop and the various 
gourds are likewise good, useful and satisfying climbers 
for various purposes. Much admired by some is the 
hyacinth bean, bearing panicles of white or violet 
flowers, and later, seed pods of the same colors. 
There are not a few very practical tenants and home- 
owners, however, who, while they readily admit that 
purely ornamental vines are beautiful and possibly 
desirable to those who are not especially concerned as 
to the “bread and butter question,” insist that every 
available foot of soil in which seeds may be planted, 
and that all waste spaces on walls, fences and verandas 
that would produce wild cucumbers and ornamental 
beans might just as well be producing cucumbers and 
beans of the “domesticated” type—those which are 
“tame” enough to be coaxed into the house and to 
occupy a place on the dining table. 
It is to emphasize this practical phase of ornamental 
planting that the writer was prompted to touch upon 
this subject. I know of a lady who last year necessarily 
employed a step-ladder to gather her crop of cucum¬ 
bers. The vines had been afforded only an opportunity 
to climb which nature has fitted the cucumber to do 
with remarkable facility, though we usually think of 
the cucumber only as a “snaky” trailing vine, requiring 
much ground space. I am fortunate in being able to 
illustrate this article with two photographs showing a 
remarkable transformation wrought upon an unusually 
repulsive combination of a dilapidated chicken coop, a 
high, rough board fence and a neighbor’s unpainted 
barn (Fig. 205). This discouraging outlook was soft¬ 
ened, rounded out and made one of real attractiveness 
as next shown in Fig. 206. It was a matter of re¬ 
gret that such a happy change could not possess the 
quality of permanence; but the remarkable improvement 
was, of couise, only temporary—for the time “bean” 
(bein’) as I might aptly state, a pun being allowable. 
The transfoimation was wrought by a row of Lima 
beans being planted, in well prepared soil, along the 
base lines of the buildings and fence. The seeds were 
dropped about six inches apart. The growing vines 
received good care arid were given a network of heavy 
wool-twine as a support to enable them to cover the 
unsightly objects. The vines were vigorous, healthy, 
fresh and beautiful the Summer through, while from 
them were gathered basket after basket of well-de¬ 
veloped Limas—more than supplying the 
family for table use and for drying. It 
was an object lesson which proved of 
great value, and I have endeavored to 
pass it along with some insistence, al¬ 
though the idea is by no means a new 
one. But as a result I have known of 
several porches or verandas screened, 
shaded and made inviting and attractive 
by planting the Lima bean as an orna¬ 
mental, and an equal number of families 
supplied with the delicious and substan¬ 
tial product of such planting. 
Let not a single tenant or home owner 
fail to make his home more beautiful be¬ 
cause of a mistaken idea that it can be 
made so only by the use of strictly orna¬ 
mental and costly vines and plants. I 
should much rather see porches, verandas, 
sunny windows and all unsightly objects 
shaded or covered with vines of pole or 
Lima beans, Hubbard squashes, White 
Spine cucumbers, Netted Gem muskmel- 
ons, Dipper gourds or some other com¬ 
mon and useful vine, than to observe sun- 
parched, weather-beaten, time-blackened 
spaces, nooks, surfaces and objects which 
there has been no attempt to protect or 
hide from view. f. h. ballou 
Ohio. 
NO SPORT OVER THIS GAME. 
I have a garden. If viewed by a com¬ 
mittee of sportsmen (?) to assess dam¬ 
age done by deer, they would consider 30 
cents about its cash value. That garden 
means much to my table and the general 
health of the family; $200 dollars spent in 
the open market could not make good the 
value of my little garden. It is faithfully 
visited every day by a herd of four to 
sixteen deer. During a Winter thaw they 
came and industriously dug up the par¬ 
snips left in the ground for Spring use. 
Last Fall I had a rough piece of land 
reclaimed and seeded down. It is within 
a stone’s throw of my front door. The 
deer stand about and gobble every spear 
of grass as soon as it shows its head 
and even dig up the roots. That means a 
loss of several tons of fine clover hay. 
Would I get enough damage to pay for any trouble if 
I put in a claim ? No, indeed! This wonderful damage 
business is a farce. 
I keep two dogs; a shepherd, whose business is to 
know the stock and look after them, and a bulldog, who 
is expected to keep up a general supervision of the 
buildings and yard. They are faithful, honest gentle¬ 
men, who earn their board and taxes doing their own 
work. I send the shepherd with the herd of cows and 
these strange, long-legged creatures jump in with his 
cows. It is his duty to drive strangers away from the 
herd and keep them away. It is the duty of the game 
warden to shoot any dog annoying deer. I cannot al¬ 
low poor Shep to go with his cows or to herd them in 
THE HARD SIDE OF A BOARD FENCE. Fig. 205. 
SOFTENED BY LIMA BEAN VINES. Fig. 206. 
