Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1919 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE]

Home Town Helps

CLEAN UP THAT BACK YARD Matter of Importance That Does Not Always Seem to Be Given Consideration. At various seasons we women faithfully scour our homes from attic to cellar, and then stop at the back door leading to the yard, which, after all, is a kind of outdoor room not always fully appreciated. Many a woman most fastidious where the house proper is concerned tolerates a surprising degree of untidiness in the back garden. Accumulations of house and* garden trash are not only eyesores, but positive menaces to health. If you have been lax in the past, get busy with broom and bucket before the rubbish collectors make their next round. Dig Into the corners, particularly the dark, damp angles under porch or shed. Let in the. sunlight I Sunlight is the greatest purifier known. Get rid* if possible, of the tall wooden fences which often surround even tiny yards scarcely big enough to stretch a sheet across. Grass, and flowers refuse to grow in the rank shade, but snails and microbes flourish amazingly. Let in the health-giving sunshine; keep the yard neat and you should worry about the public gaze! Let the children help in the work. Bld them round up stray clothespins, tin cans, old brooms and milk bottles. Don’t make a clothes-prop rack of the lilac bush, nor a dishcloth drier of your shrubs. Dig up plantain and dandelion weeds from the grass while digging la good. It will be doubly hard later in the hot sun when the roots are stronger. . , . Don’t let tradesmen take short cuts across your little grass plot, even if you have to set up wdre guards, which are less unsightly than bald patches in the grass. Don’t Ipt the withered flower stalks of the iris now blooming hang around all summer. Keep the borders neat by cutting i all withered leayes and flowers. Set a trash barrel in an unobtrusive corner. Teach the children to throw into it all refuse not suitable for the garbage pail. Tell the kiddies you take pride in your tidy, pretty garden and they will take pleasure in helping the good work along.—• Philadelphia Record.