Watering House Plants
Immerse the pot in a bucket of water, and leave it until it stops bubbling. This done twice a week is far better than daily sprinkling. Neither is it good to keep water in a saucer under a plant; the roots do not like a constant soaking. Wash the leaves from time to time, and when the weather is warm enough, give them some fresh air.
Tobacco dust will keep away green lice (aphides); so, also, will Persian insect powder. Blow either on with little bellows, or “air guns.”
There is a plant food for house plants which is sold by dealers. One teaspoonful dug into the earth once in two weeks is very beneficial to their growth.
[CHAPTER LX]
Garden Color-Pictures
MOTHER NATURE never makes a mistake if left to her own choice of colors.
Indeed, she is a real color artist. What could be lovelier than the purple of the New England aster, near the lavender of the Joe Pye weed, with an interlacing of wild carrot and yarrow; then, not too near, the dangling orange jewel weed, and a little farther away, the brown cat-tail-all set in a green frame, in the soft light of the dove blue of the sky?
That is just one of Mother Nature’s color-pictures. If you watch her many pictures, you will learn that—
Flowers in masses are more beautiful than in design.
That many white flowers are needed to divide the severe contrast of colors.
That—
| Yellow combines well with | — | purple and lavender blue scarlet browns |
but that yellow does not combine well with crimson or magenta.
| Blue combines well with | — | yellow crimson, magenta pink |
Light pink and yellow are good together, depending upon the shades.
It is difficult to describe the beauty of Mary Frances’ garden. Peeping over the green velvet of the lawn is a border of low-growing white flowers which look like ribbons of snow. They are sweet alyssum—“Little Gem.”
Just back of them come pink Baby Rambler roses; next, a large mass of charming blue-lavender eupatorium; and “locking arms” with the eupatorium, on the other side, is a rudbeckia, a bush bearing little “brown-eyed” flowers.
Between the pink of the Baby Rambler and the blue of the eupatorium is a bush of feverfew; and between the blue of the eupatorium and the yellow of the rudbeckia is the white of achillea.
Mary Frances says that she thinks that these flowers form the most perfect color-picture in her garden.
On the other side of the garden are perennial sunflowers which are so much more desirable than golden glow, and beneath them are brilliant nasturtiums.
One must remember that the various shades of one color always combine well together.
For instance, in the Spring, Mary Frances has pink tulips blooming just beneath a bush of flowering almond; and daffodils beneath golden bell or forsythia.
The flowering almond and forsythia shrubs that Mary Frances has, she grew from little sprigs which a neighbor gave her. She simply put them down into the ground and kept them well watered!
All the flowers mentioned except nasturtiums are hardy perennials, and have never had but the slightest care since planting two years ago, except thinning out where they became too thick.
[CHAPTER LXI]
Patterns for Paper Flowers
DEAR Girls and Boys:
Don’t you want to make a flower, now that you begin to know how wonderful they are?
