Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1918 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

PLANNING FOR SPRING WORK Wintry Days Aid in -Mapping Out Landscaping to Be Done Very Early in the Season. The dreary days of winter cause many to reflect on how much more beautiful they could hnve made their grounds the past summer, and already plans are being laid for landscaping the coming spring. All landscape gardening should express some thought or feeling and a deep study of the site and surroundings should reveal upon what specific foundation the theme should be built If for a home place for a man well along in years, retired from business, it should have an air of quietness, seclusion and retirement. This conception would be most easily realized on a country place of some acres and would more closely conform to nature than any other type. Fortunately this would wreak few changes in the natural aspect and would closely approach the ideal in landscape or natural gardening as distinguished from other and more formal or picturesque styles. Landscapes may also be bold or gay, or even florid —perhaps lurid, says a landscape gardener; but when they get to be too bizarre it passes out of the realm of landscape gardening, which is to either build close to nature or merely assist nature in touching up bare spots or insufficient and unsatisfactory effects in the existing wildness. When the process is finished it should present a picture, a perfect picture. The true test is: Will the artist come to paint or to photograph? For, insofar as you attract or repel him, just to that degree have you succeeded or failed. Harmony must also be the keynote, a picture Is not composed of a collection of interesting objects or features except these are in harmony. Neither will change in topography or mere planting make a picture, for good pictures are strong in character and this is possible only in a broad comprehensive plan that first considers and treats the landscape as a wholeall effects, grading, planting, even buildings are, or should be, but Incidentals !

USE FOR THE OLD MATERIAL Second-Hand Lumber and Other Build* Ing Necessaries Can Be Picked Up for Little Money. One of the most Interesting and profitable ways in which one who contemplates building a house and wants to economize in doing it can spend an hour or more is in one of the establishments devoted to the buying and selling of second-hand building materials. There is one which is particularly Inviting to “prowlers.” It faces on two streets in an out-of-the-way part of the city and consists of a number of old buildings with yards between, in which there is an overflow of old statues, columns of porches, metal spouting, garden' seats and other “junk.” One could pick up many a, thing here that could be incorporated in a new-old house, but Inside the buildings there is a greater w’ealth to choose from. Here one may find hardwood floors, as good as new, taken from houses that have been torn down to make way for larger and more modern structures. Here are beautifully carved mantels of marble and wood, some of them having cost hundreds of dollars, which can be purchased as cheaply as a commonplace one that was turned out from the factory yesterday. There are doors and casings of beautiful wood, bookshelves with glass ddors, ceilings, cabinets of all kinds, sideboards, windows, bath tubs and all bathroom fittings; sinks, tubs and all the paraphernalia for the kitchen. It is hard to think of anything that is needed in the construction of a house that is not here or of anything that is here which would not fit in some kind of house.