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Show CLEAN UP. Beautify Your Homes and Farms by Clearing Away the Weeds. The following article, clipped from the Commoner, certainly strikes home in more places than it ought to. and in no place harder than in the small vil- ages where all the vacant Jots become beds ot sunflowers, and piles of tin cans lie around in all the back yards. 'It is strange that men who are so patriotic' that they cannot stand it to hear a word said about their town, without with-out resenting it, forget that towns, as well as people, are judged from outward appearance. Nothing can possibly give a town such a forlorn, ragged appearance appear-ance as patches of sunflowers. "This is no less true in the country, but 111 spite of the law concerning the mowing of the roads we still continue to have high hedges of sunflowers along the country roads, shutting out the breeze and keeping the dust in one's face during July and August. "Do not allow your back -ard to become be-come a dumping ground for e'verv worthless, worth-less, rubbishy old thing that can find a lodgment nowhere else, if it is good enough to keep at all. it is good enough to care for, and it should have a place of its own: if it has no value, it should find a place on the kindling pile, or the manure heap: if it will neither rot nor burn, then its place is 'without the carr.p.' "There are -things' that must be allowed, al-lowed, even on the -kitchen lawn.' but such things should be kept in. at least, orderly confusion. Old lumber is sometimes some-times a necessary evil. and. like a few other necessities, must be tolerated, but it. should be neatly and ctoselv piled, the scrappy pieces going into the kindling kind-ling pile. If one has ever so small a garden, there should be a pit or hole dug, and into this should go all vegetable vege-table refuse and other decomposable matter, mat-ter, and thus turned into the best of fertilizer. Unless you have tried it, vou do not realize what a wonder-worked this pit will turn out for you, if kept wet with your kitchen slops. "Burn all old shoes and rags. Do not allow them to accumulate; offer them as a daily sacrifice to the Goddess Hv-glene. Hv-glene. Gather up all broken bits of dishes, dish-es, glassware, or other 'imperishable' rubbish and let the accumulation go with the ashes and cinders into the outer world. "Do not allow weeds to grow inside your yard fence. Sunflowers and hollyhocks holly-hocks will grow as readily as burdock and jimson weed, and blue grass will do as well as either of these. If you must have tall things, try a few of the blossoming blos-soming shrubs. Or a row of gooseberry bushes around the premises would repay especially if you get a good variety of 'tame' ones. "Do not think, because you may live in the country, that it does not matter how things are kept: it should matter to you: for so much of your life is spent with this back yard as 'your only exercise ground, that you have need, for your soul's sake, that it should be full of beautiful things things that wouid rouse you out of 'yourself; that would make you glad to be alive, and that would cheer and evcourage you. no matter mat-ter how full of sh.iiows yeUir sky might be. If your life bo confined to the city, so much more nejd of this'ne bright spot, to which you may turn to satisfy the cry of the soul after the God of nature." |