The Library of Work and Play: Outdoor Work

by Mary Rogers Miller

The wrong way. The stub prevents healing

But if there is a limb to be cut off a tree in the door yard who is likely to be delegated to the job? Every boy ought to know how to do this right. You may be acquainted with the boy who sat on the limb and sawed between the tree and himself, but you will certainly not share his fate. When you use the pruning shears on the branches and twigs of a tree or shrub you are, so to speak, cutting its fingernails or hair: but when you go up with a saw you are performing a far more serious operation. Do not forget that the life processes of the tree, the circulation of the blood, the assimilation of the food, the respiration, all go on right under the bark. The "heart" of the tree is a misnomer. That fresh moist layer which is uncovered by the skinning of a tree is the only part of the tree which is really actively alive and at work. This layer, called the cambium, extends like a tight-fitting garment over the entire tree. Every tiny twig and spur is overlaid with it. If you ever had an "infected" finger from a scratch or pin prick or cut you have some idea of the danger the tree is exposed to when the cambium layer is laid bare and the wound neglected. Compare the two drawings on this page. Look at the trees in your yard. Are there some like No. 1 and others like No. 2? In No. 1 the pruner cut a branch off close up to the main trunk. The wound was dressed with thick paint to close the pores. All around the edge of the wound was the cut edge of the cambium layer. A roll of new tissue formed there, covering a part of the wound the first year. In a year or two more the roll became broad enough to close over the smooth base where the severed limb was. The wound is healed. But look at the long stubs of No. 2. That was the work of a "tree butcher." Already the stub has begun to rot and the injury has gone far into the tree, past cure. You have seen a fine board ruined by a knot hole? That knot hole was made by careless pruning. Have you seen beautiful "curly" places in fine woodwork? Those curls or "eyes" are made by the healing over of places where limbs came off. As the cambium adds layer after layer over it, the base of the old limb becomes more and more deeply buried in the wood.

Learn the principles of pruning: cut off the branch, no matter how small, close to the trunk or larger branch from which it grew; cover the wound with a dressing to prevent decay. Trees, shrubs, vines, and bushes should be pruned every year. Cut out all dead wood, and then prune to shape the tree or shrub as you want it or to produce the greatest quantity of fruit, blossoms or branches.

CLEANING RUGS

The sanitary home has never a carpet these days, but rugs on bare floors. These rugs, if small enough to handle every week, make the semi-annual old bugbear of house-cleaning a thing of the past. What could be more dreary than to come home from school some afternoon and find the floors littered with flattened old straw, so gray with dust as to be scarcely recognizable? Getting that straw out was the boys' work, the girls did the sweeping and mother washed the floor. How cheerless the days that followed! How damp the floors, how extra careful we had to be not to carry in dirt on our way to bed! The whole house wore a dejected expression reflected by the family. All because of those miserable carpets. They had to be beaten, too, and the clouds of dust that had to be breathed before we heard the welcome call, "That's enough now. Don't whip that carpet all to pieces. Fold it up and bring it in." As we folded it we realized how far from clean it really was and how we longed to turn the hose on it. But no one had the courage to suggest such an unorthodox proceeding. Probably the colour would all run and the carpet would shrink and everything. But anyhow we wished it was really clean, now that so much discomfort had been endured to clean it.

Rugs on bare floors are preferable. They can be swept and beaten every week and they can be washed. No rug should be hung on a line to be beaten. It is bad for the rug and a waste of energy. A rug-beating rack can be made which will save the wear on the rugs and get them more nearly clean than any other dry method I know of. It is described, by Mr. W. C. Egan, who devised it, as follows:

Rug-beating frame up against the barn

Make a frame of four by four pine timbers, braced across the corners. It should be somewhat bigger than the biggest rug you expect to beat. Stretch galvanized iron fencing over this frame and staple it securely all round. The best place for this frame is at the side of the barn. Strong strap hinges should be used to attach it to a piece of four by four spiked to the barn at a height convenient for your beating. When the frame is not in use it is pushed up and rests against the side of the barn, held in place by hooks. A rope and two pulleys enable one to raise and lower the frame easily. When down, the frame rests on swinging legs made of inch iron pipe and attached to the frame at the outer corners. The rug should be laid on the netting pile downward.

Rug-beating is hard work no matter what kind of tools one has. But who does not love to ply the hose? I made up my mind once that a rug that had to have an expensive compressed air bath or stay dirty was not living up to its function as a sanitary floor covering. I experimented with an all-wool rug, some good white soap, warm rain water, and a scrubbing brush. A good lather was laid first on the back, then I threw discretion to the winds and lathered the face of the thing. I scrubbed it as if my life depended upon making the colours run, if they would. Then I let the children turn the hose on it. We turned it over and over and over again, till it was very, very wet. It was also clean. We left it on the grass in the shade the first day. Then we laid it still damp, face down, on the clean, dry floor of the porch where the sun could get at it and the breeze. It was dry by the night of the second day and so clean that it was a real joy to handle it. One by one we put every rug in the house through the same course of treatment. A couple of Wiltons, a few of Brussels carpeting, some that were woven out of old ingrain carpets, the rag ones, and finally the precious Orientals went through the water cure. Before I dared do this last act, I got advice from a rug man, who said that really good rugs would suffer no harm from such treatment. But one never believes until he tries it, and now we all believe, and our rugs are more beautiful than before. We treated the best rugs very gently, of course, but none the less thoroughly, and we dried them face up on the hard floor right in the sun part of the time. It takes about three days and nights to get the dampness all out.