70 
House & Garden 
Wing’s Peonies 
He who plants a Peony secures everlasting beauty. As surely as 
the beautiful season follows the snow and ice, so surely will come its 
sumptuous flowers, becoming more beautiful every year. Money 
spent for good Peonies is well invested, for they have a monetary 
value in addition to the appeal of their loveliness. With choice 
Peonies there is a constant scarcity. This has been so for years, and 
it will be increasingly so now since the passage of the Exclusion Act 
forbidding the further importation of these plants. Without doubt 
many varieties will be temporarily withdrawn from trade and others 
will be increased in price. 
We have Peonies of all types and classes, good strong roots that 
will bloom next season. In our collection of over five hundred varie¬ 
ties are all the good standard sorts and many new and rare things. 
The newer kinds have a much greater range of color than the old 
ones, coming in opalescent shades and unusual combinations, delicate 
and brilliant rose, lilac, salmon, apricot and cream, as well as deeper 
and richer tones of carmine, bright red and crimson. 
Now is the time to plant. 
Send for catalogue today 
The Wing Seed Co., Box 1627, Mechanicsburg, Ohio 
The House of Quality and Moderate Prices 
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Rose Diseases and Their Control 
(Continued from page 68) 
ping them into a vessel containing water 
covered with a film of kerosene, or 
screening the plants with mosquito net¬ 
ting, especially the latter, often affords 
the only means of preventing their de¬ 
structive work. 
Insecticides 
Arsenate of lead, which may be ob¬ 
tained as a powder or a paste, has been 
found to be one of the most effective 
substances for use as a spray against 
leaf-eating insects. It is a deadly poison 
and should be handled with great care. 
About one-eighth of a pound of the 
paste or one-sixteenth of a pound of the 
powder to ten quarts of water makes 
a solution of the proper strength. 
Sucking insects obtain their food by 
sucking the sap. Aphids are usually 
on the youngest growth at the tips of 
the branches, both on the stems and on 
the under side of the leaves. When bad¬ 
ly infested the leaves curl and protect 
the insects on their under surface. 
Thrips injure the flowers, while scale 
insects usually inhabit the woody por¬ 
tion of the bush and are capable of 
killing it. Insects of this class have to 
be killed by the insecticide coming in 
contact with them. Materials tised 
for this purpose are 40 per cent nico¬ 
tine sulphate, pyrethrum, fish-oil soap, 
kerosene emulsion, and lime-sulphur. 
The material should be applied in a fine 
spray, with considerable force, so as to 
find its way under the foliage and strike 
the culprit. Death comes from the in- 
Prairie D 
H AVE you a hopeless looking cot¬ 
tage, farm house or just a tum¬ 
bled down shack of any kind? 
Is it standing empty, simply because 
you haven’t the moral courage to attack 
the problem of making it livable? Are 
you hesitating because you think you 
haven’t nearly enough pennies to meet 
the expense of re-furnishing and re¬ 
decorating it? If this is the case, hesi¬ 
tate no longer. These are all minor 
details. There is one solution and only 
one thing necessary to success—the de¬ 
sire to make ugly surroundings attrac¬ 
tive and the will that triumphs over a 
little hard work. 
It was a house in the midst of the 
Idaho sage brush that we decided to 
make not only livable but lovely, and 
this on a small outlay of money. It 
was a two-story house well buflt of 
shingles, brown and beautifully weather- 
stained, with a green shingled roof. It 
had stood empty twenty years, left to 
the mercy of stray natives and a few 
parties trekking across the plains. Most 
of the furniture had been stolen and 
what was left was broken and worn 
past recognition. Desolation seemed 
complete. It was our job to work a 
miracle, and to get as much fun out 
of it as possible. 
We began with the porch and de¬ 
cided to make an outdoor living room 
of it. It ran the length of the house, 
was screened and there were bamboo 
shades to temper the glare of the sun. 
Hop vines grew part of the way, mak¬ 
ing one corner dark and cool. 
We repainted the floors and wood¬ 
work dark green and bought three tan 
grass rugs. The furniture was of the 
plainest and consisted of three brown 
couch hammocks, piled with yellow 
cushions, two large tables, three small 
ones, some chairs and a victrola. This 
was all painted a vivid yellow. Boston 
ferns hung from the ceiling at intervals 
and grew in big yellow pots on the 
railing. On one table was an old blue 
jar kept filled with yellow daisies and 
on another a bronze bowl full of some 
small purple flower that grew wild on 
secticide closing the breathing pores and 
suffocating the insect or penetrating to 
its vital parts, or both. Great thor¬ 
oughness is needed in applying these 
insecticides. The aphids may often be 
knocked off by a strong stream of water 
from a hose where available, and this 
treatment, frequently given, is often all 
that is necessary to keep them in check. 
An abundance of ants on the plants is 
always suggestive of the presence of 
aphids. 
Forty per cent nicotine sulphate, a 
liquid procurable in most seed stores 
under various proprietary names, diluted 
with about 1,000 parts of water in 
which a little fish-oil soap or good 
laundry soap has been previously dis¬ 
solved, is now recognized as the most 
efficient aphid remedy. For small quan¬ 
tities, add one teaspoonful of the nico¬ 
tine to each one or two gallons of water 
in which about one-half an ounce of 
soap has been dissolved. One thorough 
application is usually 100 per cent ef¬ 
fective, though a second spraying may 
sometimes be necessary. The necessity 
of covering every individual insect 
should be constantly borne in mind. 
Other remedies useful in combating 
the sap-sucking insects are pyrethrum, 
or Persian insect powder, used at the 
rate of one ounce to two quarts of 
water; fish-oil soap dissolved at a rate 
of one-quarter pound to eight quarts of 
water; kerosene emulsion; and lime-sul¬ 
phur and other commercially prepared 
insecticides. 
ecoration 
the sage brush. For lighting, we had 
two hanging, oval Chinese lanterns, of 
delicately painted parchment. Inside of 
these were candles, as there was neither 
gas nor electricity. 
Very little had been expended on this 
and the effect of the yellow furniture 
with the brown and green of plants 
and woodwork was charming. 
The lower floor of the house con¬ 
sisted of a small hall, large living room, 
dining room, pantry and kitchen. The 
living room was panelled half way up 
in green wood and the walls were of 
unfinished plaster a deep cream shade. 
There was a lovely rough stone fireplace 
and a bay window. Some dilapidated 
furniture we painted dark green and 
upholstered it in an inexpensive cre¬ 
tonne that had a cream background 
and a pattern of bright yellow apples 
and green leaves. This was also used 
for hangings with cream net window 
curtains. We painted a round table 
green and cut cretonne to fit the top 
and tacked it on. The lamps were love¬ 
ly brown, vase-shaped baskets into 
which fitted plain kerosene lamps. The 
shades were of gold colored silk with 
an inch and a half silk fringe. On the 
floor, which we had painted and var¬ 
nished, was a tan and green grass rug. 
Green and yellow Chinese bowls were 
kept filled with yellow daisies and white 
clover. 
The dining room was panelled half 
way in dark oak with rough plaster 
walis. The same cretonne as in the 
living room was used here for hangings. 
We bought plain kitchen chairs, a round 
table and painted them a deep yellow. 
We cut out some of the apples from 
the cretonne and glued them on the 
chair backs as a design, and then var¬ 
nished over it, with surprisingly good 
results. The china came from the 
Chinese section of the nearest city. It 
was charmingly colored, green and 
white. 
We furnished three bedrooms in the 
simplest possible way. One had white 
wall paper. Here the furniture—a bed, 
(Continued on page 72) 
