☞ Let alone the knife and saw. Your vines and trees will not be benefited by any pruning at this season.
PARLOR FLOWERS.
Water freely such as are in pots, while in blossom. The flower stalks will be apt to shoot up taller and weaker than in the garden, and will require rods to support them. Let the rod be thrust down about two inches from the centre of the flower, and attach the flower stem to it by one or two ligaments. Flowers in small stove rooms can be kept in health with extreme difficulty. The heat forces their growth, or injures the leaves. They should be washed off once a week (either on a mild day out of doors, or in a warm room within, if the weather be severe), as the dust settles upon the leaf, and stops up the stomata (mouths) by which the leaf perspires and breathes. If green aphides infest them, put a pan of coals beneath the stand, and throw on a half-handful of coarse tobacco. In half an hour every insect will tumble off. Let such as lie on the surface of the earth be removed or crushed, as they will else revive. Plants should have fresh air every day.
A SALT RECIPE.
There is a great fashion, now-a-days, in all papers, to set forth useful recipes for every imaginable purpose. Every newspaper has its weekly budget of recipes. Our magazines have a page of original recipes; and, before long, why should not the North American Review, or the Edinburgh Review come out with their quarterly bill of fare reciped in full? So practical is our nineteenth century, that our literary men and women feel it to be a solemn duty to indite novel recipes for cooking, seasoning, removing stains, curing diseases, etc.; and why not? If one can invent a sonnet, an elegy, or worse yet, a poem, and thus draw people’s brains a wool-gathering in the regions of imagination, ought they not to atone for their license by an invention equally substantial for the body? Miss Leslie writes a beautiful story, and a recipe for manipulating lobsters. Miss Martineau writes travels, political economies and suggestions on plum pudding. Mrs. Sigourney tunes her lyre with a hand most redolent of pies, cakes and gingerbread. Such is the aspect of culinary affairs, and the rights of women, that the day seems at hand when no learning will sustain a man, and no accomplishments a woman, who does not understand the art and mystery of cooking. It will be the duty of some future Heyne to give accurate recipes for all the feasts of Homer’s heroes, the ingredients of all the Horacian drinking-bouts—the dishes of Virgil’s fine fellows, as well as the minor matters of armor, language, manners, and customs; and a good lexicon, Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, must contain clearly written recipes for all the dishes used by the people whose language it sets forth. We have been led into this grand prairie of reflections by a recipe found in a country paper which unquestionably is salty.
“Indian Baked Pudding.—Indian pudding is good and wholesome, baked. Scald a quart of milk, and stir in seven
table spoonfuls of salt, a tea-cupful of molasses, and a great spoonful of ginger, or sifted cinnamon. Bake three or four hours. If you want whey you must be sure and pour in a little cold milk, after it is all mixed. Try it.”