Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1914 — City Flower Beds That Will Tease the Palate [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

City Flower Beds That Will Tease the Palate

CLEVELAND, O.—Gaily Intoning, “Where Ignorance is bliss ’twere folly to be wise,” Theodore H'. Wenz, secretary of the elections board bureau of registry's, has coaxed one of the finest market gardens in Cleveland into

being in the belief that he was growing flowers. With whole-hearted enthusiasm he delved and dug, early and late, planting beet seeds for petunias, lettuce for cosmos, radishes for asters, lima beans for pansies and tomatoes for celosia plumosa. The back to nature impulse hit Wenz last winter and he spent his evenings at his home, -studying the culture of flowers. As soon as the frost was out of the ground he began operations. First he wrote Congress-

man William Gordon for literature and, well supplied with data, he began to delve into the subject. With the first warm days of spring he ordered a consignment of flower seeds and displayed them to his fellow employes in the board of elections offices, and right there Is where he made his tactical error. William Schnerer, recorder of naturalization papers, had not forgotten that Wenz -had substituted two dozen glass eggs for a like number of the .poachable commodity, belonging to him and he was not slow in emptying out the flower seeds and replacing them with those of vegetables. Each day Wenz has issued bulletins on his “flower garden” and the other day he said: "I tell you posy beds are the envy of the neighborhood. A funny thing happened last night though. 1 was showing a woman who livefe next door the plants last night and asked her what she thought of my asters. "She said: ( ‘They look like radishes, and your petunias look like beets, the cosmos like lettuce and the pansies like beans.’ Doesn’t it beat all how ignorant some people are?”