Green Bouquets

When there are no flowers to be had you can have bouquets and centrepieces of green leaves, ferns, and vines, and you will be surprised to find what pretty ones can be arranged and how much they will be admired.

Ferns will wither soon unless taken up with the roots and the soil surrounding them; but if they have the roots and soil they will last a long while, provided you put them in a bowl or jar and keep them always wet. That does not mean to water them as you would any other growing plant, but to keep them standing in water all the time. Maidenhair-fern kept in this way makes a delicate and beautiful centrepiece for the table.

Sometimes you will find varieties of foliage that are full of color. In early summer the young leaves of the scrub-oak are very brilliant in reds and yellows, and I have made bouquets of nothing but leaves from the rose-bushes. These are often tinged with red and purple. Sprays of the barberry-bush with its rows of dangling red berries are pretty in a green bowl. Be careful of the thorns when you gather this. Cut the stems; do not try to break them.

PART II
GRASSES

CHAPTER VIII
FAIRY-TREES MADE OF GRASSES

Some of our grasses appear like very large trees to the little grass fairies who, we like to pretend, hide in their midst; while other grasses, with their jointed, bamboo-like stems, seem to these tiny people to be tall forests of real bamboo.

Why not play that you are a little fairy and live among the grasses? But to see the grasses as the fairies see them you must lie down and bring your eyes very near the ground; so stretch yourself out flat, face down, with your head lower than the grass tops; then look steadily ahead through the tall grass stems. What do you see?

The five fairy-trees standing by themselves in [Fig. 46] are four short-stemmed tops of the Scribner's panic-grass. [Fig. 47] shows exactly how the grass looks before you pick it, and [Fig. 48] gives a simple design that you can make by placing the tips of the four grass tops together, allowing the stems of two heads to lie in a straight horizontal line (that means a line running from left to right), and the stems of the other two heads to lie in a straight line vertically (that means up and down).

Fig.46 - Trees of Scribner's Panic-Grass.

While you are playing with the grasses you can begin to learn something about them. The beard-grass, which some people call the little blue-stem ([Fig. 49]), has near relatives named forked beard-grass and bushy beard-grass. These are stiff and angular, with bamboo-like stems, just the thing for trees in a little Japanese garden which some time you will want to make. You may run across them anywhere, for they are common in all parts of our country.

Fig.47 - Scribner's Panic-Grass as it grows, Panicum Scribnerianum.

Make friends with these and with other grasses. As you find them learn their names just as you would learn the names of new playmates. Take the grasses home, show them to your father and to your mother; if they do not know their names, carry them to school and ask your teacher about them. In case she cannot tell you, go to the public library with your grasses and persuade the librarian at the desk to help you find their pictures and names in some of her books. All grasses have names, so keep asking and hunting until you know what to call them. When you know their names you will be glad to see your friends, the pretty green grasses, whenever you find them.

Fig.49 - You will run across these anywhere.

In [Chapter XVIII], which tells how to make a burdock-burr house, you will find more about grasses.

Fig.48 - Scribner's Panic-Grass. Design made of four grass heads.

CHAPTER IX
A HOUSE MADE OF GRASS

Real people live in grass houses way off in the Philippine Islands. That is, their houses are made of bamboo, which is a kind of giant grass. It must be a pretty airy, comfortable house in summer, and it is always summer in the Philippines, but we never see that kind of houses here. One reason is because in most of our country a grass house would be very cold in winter, and another reason for not building them is because the bamboo grows only in the extreme south, and even down there people want more substantial homes.

A prettier playhouse, though, could not be devised, and if you could see a Filipino house you would want it immediately, but since you cannot have a real one you can have the fun of making a little doll Filipino house, and of making it exactly as the little brown Filipino men make theirs. Suppose you gather some grass and twigs now, and build the little house for your doll.

Some of the queer little people whose home is in the Philippine Islands perch their houses like birds' nests up in the trees, but often they are built on stilts to lift them high from the ground. Our little house ([Fig. 50]) shall be on stilts. We will make the floor first. If you do not understand how to measure by inches, ask an older person to help you.