physician whom you know sufficiently so that you consult him by
telephone, are wise precautions against sudden crises of weather or
health. Of course, if a member of your family is seriously ill, your
doctor will come with all haste when summoned. But he is a busy man
who often works from before breakfast until nearly midnight covering
unbelievable distances in his automobile. So, if you can report
illness clearly, give exact symptoms, and have a stock of the simple
medicines that you can administer as he directs, both the sick person
and the physician gain. Present-day country doctors show their
appreciation for such cooperation by the speed with which they reach
patients whose symptoms indicate more than a minor ailment.
But all the emergencies of country life are not serious even though
they call for action. There are scores of little things that the house
owner can do for himself. Take rats and mice. They will get into the
most carefully built and best run house. When this happens it is a
matter of either traps or the new scientific poison baits that
domestic pets will not eat. There is also the old farm method of
mixing equal parts of plaster of Paris and corn meal, an entree
harmless in itself but with fatal results for the invading rodent. In
summer there is the possibility of a plague of ants. For this there is
now a cheap and scientific liquid bait that works rapidly.
In summer, also, come those occasional nights of abnormal heat when no
breeze stirs. Bedrooms stay hot and sleep is difficult. For this, set
an electric fan on the floor of each room, pointed toward the ceiling,
with a chair before it to serve as a barricade. The current of air so
produced dislodges the hot air in the room that is above the level of
the window openings and also provides a mild breeze that does not blow
directly on a sleeper. By actual tests with an accurate thermometer,
the temperature of a bedroom can be lowered a full five degrees. It is
this difference between 80 and 85 degrees that can make an otherwise
stifling night bearable enough for refreshing sleep.
Also at the time you want it most, usually with the house full of
week-end guests, the hot water supply turns tepid. The means of
heating the water is functioning properly but the storage tank is
cold. When this happens, unless all water piping is of copper or
brass, the chances are better than even that your tank is clogged with
rusty sediment. This does not mean a new tank. It is just a matter of
draining and flushing until most, if not all, of the sediment is
washed out. Turn off the pipe that supplies heater and tank. Then with
garden hose attached to the faucet at the base of the tank, drain out
all the water that will come. For a thorough job unscrew this faucet
and the piece of pipe connecting it to the tank. Then turn on the
water supply quickly for two or three minutes at a time so that a
sudden flow of clean water disturbs the sediment. At first it may be
almost as thick as a heavy soup but gradually the water will become
clearer. When it is normal you can replace pipe and faucet, relight
the water heater, and forget your hot water supply for at least a
year. Of course, it is better to undertake this chore when you are
without company, but one must have hot water and, at that, the
operation should not take over an hour. Perhaps some of the guests
will be big hearted and offer to help.
A plaster ceiling appears to fall without warning. Actually, if you
are observant, weak spots can be detected before they reach the
falling stage. A slight bulge that gives if you press it upward gently
with the fingers is an unfailing indication that the plaster has begun
to loosen and that possibly the laths beneath are also loose. The best
method of correcting this is, of course, to engage a plasterer. He
will remove what is loose and probably much more. Then, having
replaced the defective or old lath, he will re-plaster and a properly
finished job will result.
There is, however, another course of action. It is neither permanent
nor as good but it will bridge a gap when the family exchequer can ill
afford the luxury of a plasterer and his helper. This is an old farm
method of economical stop-gap repair. Take some new coarse muslin.
Make a strong solution of glue sizing; wash the calcimine or whitewash
from the ceiling where it is weak; paint with a coat of the size; and
when it is almost dry, spread the muslin on like ceiling paper having
first dipped it in the size. When the cloth is dry, re-calcimine the
ceiling. Such work is not according to the best standards of
journeyman work but we have known a ceiling so strengthened to remain
in place for some years. This unorthodox trick was taught us by the
neighborhood handy man whose praises we sang earlier. Another was the
practice of binding a water pipe, that had developed a tiny pin-hole
leak, with the black sticky fabric known as friction tape used by
electricians. It held for half a year until it was more convenient,
financially and otherwise, to have our plumber replace the leaking
pipe.
Incidentally, knowing how to thaw a water pipe that has, as countrymen
say, "just caught," on some abnormally cold night is also an
accomplishment of ingenuity. Too much heat applied too rapidly can
crack a pipe. So such work should be done in moderation. Be sure the
faucet of the stopped pipe is open. Then, locate the spot by sense of
feel. It will be much colder than the rest of the pipe. First try
wrapping it in cloths wrung out in hot water. If this does not produce
results, gently pour steaming but not boiling water on the pipe from a
teakettle. Stop after a minute or two to let the applied heat become
effective. If necessary, repeat several times. For stubborn cases, an
electric heater directed at the frozen spot can be used effectively.
When hunting for the seat of trouble look at the spot where the pipe
comes through the floor. A crack between flooring and baseboard may be
the air leak that has caused the trouble. Next examine the pipe along
an exterior wall or in the direct range of a window. Frozen pipes
concealed in partition walls, unless they are accessible through a
panel of removable woodwork, are not for the amateur. They are for a
plumber who will know how to reach the trouble without doing other
damage.
Many are the expedients that life in the country and friendly chats
with your own handy man can teach you. Some of them you will discover
for yourself, for necessity, the mother of invention and country
living, often presents minor emergencies that the house owner must
meet and conquer for himself. That is part of the fun of living in the
country. You have escaped the stereotyped city where such things are
the concern of apartment house superintendents. In the country it is
each man for himself.
WORKING WITH NATURE
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER XVII_
WORKING WITH NATURE
In the home owner's dream of country life, green lawns, rose gardens,
and shady terraces have loomed large; but in the actual fulfillment,
his house has of necessity come first. Beyond a sketchy clearing up of
the most obvious debris, he may well come to the end of his first
summer with practically nothing done to the grounds themselves. This
is not entirely a disadvantage. It has been shown how too much may be
done to a house in the first fervor of remodeling or restoration. It
is the same with the land surrounding it.
The old adage, "Begin as you can hold out," is an excellent rule to
follow. One of the advantages gained by living in an area just beyond
the suburban fringe is that one's two, five, or ten acres may be
developed as much or as little as one desires or can pay for. This
holds whether you have built a new house in the middle of a former
pasture or have restored an old one with grounds well developed but
long neglected.
[Illustration: SKILLFUL PLANTING OF TREES, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS MAKE
THE SETTING
_Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_. _Robertson Ward, architect_]
Of course, you will not lack for advice from friends and
acquaintances, most of the people who have never grown anything more
extensive than a window box. They will tell you that the old lawn that
has withstood the tread of feet for more than a century is uneven and
must be plowed under, re-graded, and a special kind of lawn-grass
sown. The driveway is all wrong, too. Turn it back into lawn and build
a new one winding through the field to the left where the family cow
was once pastured. They are also kind enough to suggest that a
plowing, grading, and seeding of this additional acre or so will give
you a piece of greensward worth having. A lily pool and sun dial
garden would go nicely over there to the east, and how about that
hollow place over in the south corner for a swimming pool? All this
and much more can be suggested but it is surprising how little of it
is practical.
Even long neglected grounds seldom require as thorough a job of face
lifting. A lawn free of hollows is difficult to achieve and almost
impossible to maintain. Nature does not do things that way, so work
with her rather than against her. It is surprising how old and
seemingly worn-out grounds respond to kind treatment. Study them first
before doing anything. Take stock of existing trees, shrubs and the
like. Notice the contour of the land. Then make a simple landscaping
plan. This, well thought out, will give direction to the eventual
development of the plot of ground you have in mind. Work gradually. If
you are reclaiming an old place, remember the original owner did not
achieve everything in a week or a year. Nature cannot be hurried. It
is true that, if one desires shade trees and cannot wait for them to
grow, experts can bring full-grown ones from their nurseries and plant
them in the positions you designate. Such practices run into money,
however, and would hardly come within the average family budget.
Let us suppose that the home owner finds himself in possession of a
house of uncertain age and between ten and twenty acres of land.
Unless he is prepared to maintain a miniature conservation corps, he
will not attempt to keep over two acres in active cultivation. Even
with those he will not push back the wilderness in one season. The
first step is a careful inspection of the grounds around the house. If
they have been neglected for years, he may find practically anything
except grass growing. If the average tenant farmer has lived there any
length of time, the area at the back lying at easy tossing distance
from the back door may contain a wealth of tin cans, bottles, broken
dishes, and other debris. These, of course, must all be picked up and
either carried away by the rubbish collector or otherwise disposed of.
We have read of clever people who managed to persuade members of their
family and any visiting friends that such an undertaking could be made
into a sort of treasure hunt and one's grounds cleaned painlessly and
without added expense. It did not work with our family. A cache of
twenty-five fine rusty cans nestling under the lilacs elicited nothing
beyond a mild query as to the likelihood of lily of the valley
thriving in the spot.
So we hired the man whose family had spent ten long years accumulating
the debris, to clean the half acre surrounding the house and he made a
very neat workmanlike job of it. Afterward he commented on the
improved appearance, especially of the back yard. "Yes, it looks
considerable better," he said, "but of course I couldn't keep it that
way. I'm a poor man and my time is worth sixty cents an hour. I can't
afford to spend any of it picking up after myself."
His philosophy is apparently not uncommon and one may expect to find
anything on the land from rusty scythe blades to broken down farm
wagons and automobiles. After these have been removed the place will
look decidedly improved even though a mossy growth under the maples
denotes sour soil, and burdocks and milkweed in the back indicate good
soil gone wrong. Along with ridding the grounds of rubbish comes the
question of what to do with the various outbuildings. Those that can
be put to practical use should be repaired and their foundations
pointed up. Any others should be torn down as a dilapidated structure
of any sort is not only unsightly but a breeding place for rats.
As this ordinary cleaning and furbishing progresses, the new owner
begins to get really acquainted with his place and discover what
exists in the line of shrubs, trees, and vines. There may even be a
few flowers that have survived years of neglect. If he is wise, he
will prune and preserve all these as a nucleus. Around them he can
build his general landscaping plan.
Preserve old trees wherever possible. Even those that appear so
stricken by age and neglect as to be ready for firewood often take on
a new lease of life after a good tree surgeon has ministered to them.
A long neglected lawn, or even a field that has been allowed to run to
tall grass, can be reclaimed quite simply. Go over it early in the
spring with a heavy roller to get rid of minor hollows and general
unevenness. Thin, worn spots, where it is obvious that no grass has
grown for years, should be fortified with a load or two of good top
soil, rolled and planted to grass seed. Other spots, usually under
shade trees where there is the mossy growth of sour soil, should be
sprinkled liberally with lime. Repeated treatments will soon correct
this condition and grass can again be made to grow there. As soon as
the grass is of proper length begin to cut it with the lawn mower.
Also, continued applications of the weighted iron roller throughout
the spring will gradually improve the general contour and make for
smoothness and ease in lawn mowing.
This is strenuous work both for the lawn mower and the person
operating it. The former will probably be nearly worn out by the end
of the summer, so in choosing this tool get a good but not too
elaborate one. Later, when the grounds are in good condition will be
time enough to indulge in the better grades of hand or even power
driven lawn mowers. Likewise, we do not recommend the task of either
rolling or breaking in a lawn to a man who has led a sedentary life
for years. It will be cheaper in the long run to engage a muscular
individual in the locality who understands and is accustomed to such
work. Whether such an one is engaged by the hour, day, week or year,
we would add a word of warning based on our own blundering
experiences. Beyond being sober, honest, and willing, make sure he is
strong enough for such heavy work, that he is reasonably intelligent
and, most important of all, that he is not "working to accommodate."
The latter is frequently voiced by members of decadent native families
who resent the curse of Adam and like to assume that any gesture
toward the hated thing, called work, is purely voluntary rather than
necessary. If these words fall from the lips of a man you are
considering for odd jobs and tilling of the soil, leave him severely
alone and look for a good energetic individual who knows he was made
to work and is glad of it. Otherwise, the "accommodating" one will
condescendingly show up for work an hour late, regard you with a
pitying smile as you outline the job, and then allow that of course
you are the boss but you are going at it all wrong. When, after
lengthy discussion of how an intelligent country-born person would
arrange matters, he senses that the evil moment of going to work can
no longer be put off, he directs his lagging steps to the spot where
the tools are waiting. These he regards with blackest pessimism. His
attitude is that only a city moron would provide such poor things but,
of course, he will do the best he can with them. In the course of the
day he gets a little work done but in such sketchy fashion that most
of it must be done over.
Nor does he improve as the days go by. When you decide to part with
him, probably soon after your first inspection of his work, you will
get a fresh shock at the size of his bill. Such people have an
exaggerated idea of the value of their services. It is difficult to
get them to name a price at the beginning; and in the rare cases where
a set sum is agreed upon, the final reckoning will invariably include
certain extras or a plaint that "the job was different than you
claimed and I don't do heavy work like that for nobody without I get
extra pay and I was just working to accommodate--" and so forth.
Usually you end by paying him and charging it off to experience.
This does not mean that there is no good local labor. It is just a
matter of determining which man is actually "a good worker" and which
would rather lean on a hoe and tell how the country ought to be run.
You can avoid much labor turnover and unsatisfactory work if you first
ask a few questions of substantial members of the countryside who are
in the habit of employing such men and therefore know their good and
bad points. One man may be strong and willing but so stupid and clumsy
that he destroys more than he earns; another may be deft, ingenious,
have an uncanny way with flowers and vegetables, but yet have such an
utter lack of responsibility that one cannot depend on him for any
length of time.
Assuming then that a good, dependable man has been found who
understands and has a liking for the soil, the task of helping nature
to bring out the best in your grounds progresses to those parts
afflicted by such rank weeds as burdocks, thistles, milkweed, poison
ivy and the like. Weeds with the long tap root like burdock and yellow
dock can be eliminated best with a mattock. With one sharp blow, cut
the root two or three inches below the surface. Then pull up the top
and toss it aside where it will wither in the sun. What is left in the
ground also dies and will not sprout. A Canadian thistle is really a
handsome sight especially in full bloom but it is a thoroughly
unpleasant weed and must be eradicated. Dig up each plant with a
spading fork or sharp shovel and leave it to wither in the July sun,
its roots shaken free of earth. Milkweed is persistent but will
finally yield if the stalks are consistently pulled up as soon as they
are three or four inches tall.
For poison ivy there is one preliminary. Be sure you are not one of
the people readily susceptible to its poison. If you are, leave this
luxuriant parasite alone and let some one else struggle with it. Its
poison is most virulent in the spring when the leaves are just
unfolding. Later in the summer it is not so treacherous. Tearing it up
by the roots, burning over old stone fences infected with it, keep it
from overrunning a place; but the most satisfactory method of
eradicating is to sprinkle the vines with sodium arsenite. This, by
tests at various agricultural stations, has lately been found a sure
means of killing this most unpleasant of all vegetable pests that
infect the countryside.
Along with getting a reasonable expanse of green grass, the simple
landscaping plan already referred to should be kept in mind. If you
have but a vague idea concerning this and, as time goes on, tend to
become more confused and undecided as to what kind of flowers, shrubs,
and vines would be most suitable or how they should be arranged,
consult the best nurseryman in your vicinity, if he has not already
visited you. All of the larger nurseries now have on their staffs
experienced landscape architects. Many of them are recent graduates of
the recognized schools in this field and, for the asking, you can have
a simple landscape plan for your grounds. Such nurseries do this, of
course, in expectation that if the plan is accepted the needed small
trees, shrubs, and hardy perennials will be bought of them.
In fact, when the plan is submitted, it will probably be accompanied
by a tentative list of the needed plants. These you can buy either
delivered ready for planting, or a somewhat higher price will include
this service by men from the nursery. In the latter case, the nursery
usually guarantees that everything supplied will live for a year or be
replaced without charge. Personally, we have found that the nearer
home we bought nursery stock, the better were its chances of living
and thriving. There is no adjustment to different climatic conditions
and such plants and shrubs are only a very short time out of the soil
before they are planted in your grounds either by you or the man sent
from the nursery. Nearly always they put their roots down and continue
growing with little or no interruption.
The matters of gardens, flower beds, and borders again depend on the
contour of the land and how it can best be related to the house.
Further, unless you are well versed in gardening, it is best to get
advice as to the flowers and plants that thrive best in a given spot.
It is discouraging to lay out a rose garden or a modest border of
hardy climbers and find you have picked just the wrong place for them
to thrive. It is the same with certain perennials.
Rock gardens are most picturesque and lend themselves to a large
variety of hardy and interesting plants. The most successful are those
where nature supplies the framework. One of the loveliest we ever saw
had originally been a pigsty. Halfway up a hillside two large boulders
jutted out and below them a rocky formation descended in shelf-like
steps to a level surface. Ingenious planting and patient care
transformed this into a mass of color and bloom that has been admired
for miles. Its owner has gradually expanded it and has even added
rocks dug from a neighboring field. The farmer who supplied them shook
his head resignedly. "Well, I've lived in these parts a long time and
seen plenty of queer things. I can understand paying a man to dig out
rocks but this is the first time I was ever asked to dump them on good
land."
The formal garden is usually part of the development of the very
ambitious country estate. Such grounds are the result of plans
prepared by a practicing landscape architect, engaged on a fee basis
as with other architects. According to the arrangements he will
prepare the plans or he will also supervise their execution. While
there are some remarkable formal gardens in America, beautifully
designed and kept in perfect condition by skillful gardeners engaged
by the year, most homes do not have such sophisticated settings.
Popular indeed is an area of well-kept lawn surrounded by naturalistic
plantings of trees, shrubs, and hedges that give privacy and frame the
whole. Add to this borders of flowering plants, annuals and
perennials, and from spring to late fall such a spot becomes an
outdoor living room. Here the family spends most of its time. Real
enthusiasts eat many of their meals here.
As for the vegetable garden, keep it small. The new country dweller's
first garden is usually three times the size needed or that he can
take care of. Vegetables have a way of either producing nothing or
bearing in such abundance that the average family is swamped in
plenty. Whether or not the excess is canned, depends on the time and
energy of the housewife or her cook. With green vegetables now
available the year around, there are two schools of thought as to the
real economy of home canning. There is even plenty of controversy over
the question of a family vegetable garden. Some hold that after the
normal charges for fertilizer, seeds and labor are met, any vegetables
that may result actually cost far more than if bought in the retail
market. To this the pro-gardenites retort that the charges for seeds
and fertilizer are small and that a certain amount of struggle with
spade and hoe is good for a man who has spent all day in a stuffy
office. Let him do his own spading, cultivating, and planting. A half
hour or so every evening will keep the garden free of weeds and, in
due time, vegetables fresh from the garden will result. They will be
superior in flavor and will actually have cost less than even the
largest chain stores can afford to sell them for.