74 
House & Garden 
Tke W Irving Ibrgejrvc. 
!j Nos. 326 eaxd 326 Ehsf 38 IK. Street, New "York. City. 
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Telephone, Murry Hill 8556. 
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: ■ ■* 
An appropriate Chinese lamp lends to 
its surroundings a charm that is more 
to be felt than described in words. 
EDWARD I. FARMER 
CHINESE ARTS AND DECORATIONS 
5 West 56th Street, New York 
Private Hilda—National Asset 
(Continued from page 72) 
Government specialist in canning was 
sent to see that Hilda’s efforts didn’t 
go to waste because the jam had fer¬ 
mented for lack of sterilized bottles. 
Women who were never before inter¬ 
ested in the price of anything, except 
to urge it higher, saved the very skins 
and stones of Hilda’s peaches for fruit 
syrup, and sent little Tommy out to the 
countryside to hunt wild grapes, plums 
and blueberries. Ontario, in short, was 
mobilized right down to the Mycological 
Society that begged all true patriots to 
gather edible fungi for dinner and make 
catsup out of what wasn’t eaten at once! 
What It Did for Hilda 
So much for the support trenches in 
the Productive Campaign. We want to 
stop where we began, with Hilda, far 
out on the front, under the sun-fire. 
What did the summer on the soil do for 
her personally—what did it accomplish 
that tennis couldn’t bring, nor horse¬ 
back riding, nor learning to do a double 
somersault dive off the boat house roof? 
For one thing it taught her the value 
of money. When she came home on 
her first “furlough" the whole family 
went out for a week-end motor trip. 
“Mother,” sighed this soldier of the 
soil, “do you know what we call the 
people that go by in autos while we’re 
all up in the trees picking? We call 
them the idle rich. I don’t think it’s 
wrong for one day, of course, but for 
all summer—-1” 
Dad bought ice cream cones at a 
wayside tea shop on a country road. A 
year ago Hilda would have considered 
this sloppy delight a little beneath her 
dignity. Now she licked up the last 
drop with an appreciative tongue. 
“Five cents, wasn’t it?” she asked. 
“That’s two boxes of raspberries at two 
and a half, cents a box, pickers’ wages. 
And I didn’t earn it either, did I, dad?” 
Not only did Hilda learn economics 
in the orchard, the beet field, the pea 
patch. She learned sociology, from the 
farmer’s wife, the “hands,” and her fel¬ 
low pickers. She saw that manners do 
not make the man, any more than a 
manicure makes the lady. Therefore, 
as a girl who has earned $9 a week for 
sixty hours of back-breaking, arm-blis¬ 
tering toil, she isn’t nearly so likely to 
marry a boy whose chief aim in life is 
to hold the world’s long distance record 
for fox trotting. 
Many of the farmerettes will never 
go back to the purposeless life for which 
their families and the private schools 
they attended have been fitting them, 
nor are the professional women nearly 
so apt to remain satisfied with seden¬ 
tary work and a static pay-check. 
“Do you know what Dot and I have 
been thinking?” Hilda told me when 
we had sat down under the trees for a 
five-minute recess, with an old tea ket¬ 
tle of spring water between us. “We 
believe we’d like to go into farming for 
good and all!” 
The Canadian Pacific Railway has 
proved, throughout its big Western Ir¬ 
rigation Block, that women can and do 
succeed as cultivators of the rich prairie 
soil. For years the Agricultural Com¬ 
mittee of the National Council of Wom¬ 
en has been crying “back'to the land.” 
But it took Kaiser Wilhelm and his 
frightfulness to make feminine Canada 
really aware of its opportunity. 
The woman of today, if she goes into 
agriculture, will do so in a different and 
more patriotic spirit than she could have 
imagined four years ago. 
“We were coming home on the street 
car one night,” Hilda said. “Oh, but we 
were tired—and—and—Dot calls it ber¬ 
ry-stained, but I say dirty! At last some 
soldiers got on. At first I don’t think 
they knew what we were. Then they saw 
our khaki, just like theirs, and the Na¬ 
tional Service Badges on our arms. 
When we got out, I saluted, and oh, do 
you know, I believe they understood, 
for they didn’t laugh a bit. They just 
saluted back!” 
The Eleventh 
(Continued 
flowering varieties, in order to insure an 
abundance of bloom to the end of the 
season. 
The porch is one of the most impor¬ 
tant spots in the summer home, and par¬ 
ticular attention should be given to 
making it attractive as well as com¬ 
fortable. Hanging baskets and porch 
boxes are easily supplied at a late date, 
and here again the most pleasing ef¬ 
fects are to be gained by simple ar¬ 
rangements. A simple assortment, such 
as vincas, a few small dracaenas, pink 
and white geraniums, ivy geraniums and 
begonias, will be much more beautiful 
and restful than the “little of every¬ 
thing” which the local florist may supply 
if you do not give him specific instruc¬ 
tions. In addition to the porch boxes, 
it is often possible to secure from a 
florist the use of a number of palms at 
a very reasonable rate, if you are will¬ 
ing to give him a guarantee against loss. 
Such varieties as Cocos Weddelliana, 
Areca lutescens and Phoenix Roebelenii 
are easy to care for and will add a dis¬ 
tinction to your veranda and living 
room which can be gained from no other 
plant. 
While some of the annuals mentioned 
above (asters, snapdragons, petunias, 
verbenas, balloon vine and so on) may 
be started from seed, it will be better to 
get potted plants if possible. Good 
plants, however, are only the first step 
toward quick results. You want in ad¬ 
dition a soil so enriched that it will 
encourage quick growth from the start. 
To obtain this there are at least three 
things necessary: fine ground bone meal 
Hour Garden 
from page 21) 
or flour, humus, and some nitrate of 
soda. For the average small summer 
home, I should specify 25 pounds of 
ground bone, 10 pounds of nitrate of 
soda, and a 100-pound bag of humus— 
or two bags if the soil is light and run 
down. Old, thoroughly rotted manure 
will be excellent, if it is possible to ob¬ 
tain it, but you have no time to wait 
for fresh manure to decompose in the 
soil at this late date. It is highly im¬ 
portant to prepare the soil a week or 
so in advance of planting, if possible. 
In the case of nitrate of soda, however, 
the application may be made in liquid 
form, the first dose being given a few 
days after the plants have been set out. 
The humus may be used to a depth of 
2" or 3" over the surface, and the bone 
at the rate of a pound to 10 or 15 sq. ft., 
or a half handful or so mixed into the 
soil where each plant is to be set. 
In addition to these plant foods, a 
constant supply of water, enough to 
keep the soil fairly moist at all times, 
is absolutely essential to get the quickest 
growth. Dishwater from the house, in 
which ammonia has been used, will be 
found as good a growth producer as 
anything which you can obtain. 
As soon as you know that you will 
want a summer garden, provide im¬ 
mediately to have the soil enriched with 
humus and bone meal, and, if it is ob¬ 
tainable, well rotted manure. Then 
after looking the ground over carefully 
and deciding what varieties you want, 
make arrangements for having the 
plants set out at the earliest possible 
date. Every day counts! 
