Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1873 — Flowers in Winter. [ARTICLE]

Flowers in Winter.

The taste for flowers in, winter is rapidly increasing with ihe advent of hot-air furnaces and base-burners, which keep the fire burning for. months. It is a common belief that flowers cannot be made to flourish in furnace-heated rooms. Experience bag pj-pved that this is an error, at least when the "uriiac” aif-chntnber is supplied with water for evaporating, and no others are fit to use. As private conservatories are generally conducted, they are a great expense and a vexation to the heads of families. They are generally placed at some little distance from the house, all their Bide? exposed to the weather, and consequently the consumption of coal is great, and then one or more functionaries are considered necessary for taking care of them. Managed in this way, theyzcanneyer become -_a-.-coin-mon luxury. A well-built room, twelve feet by twelve, on the south side of the dwelling-house, can be warmed in winter, by a single regiatbr from the fufnaoe, to 70° Fahr, in the daytime, aiid 40° or 50° at night, and this will suffice for roses, geraniums, heliotropes, ivies, petunias, mignonette, pansies, jasmine (grandiflora), callas, the daphne odora, fuchias, salvias, gloxinias, hyacinths, and many others. Caladiums and begonias require a night temperature from 55° to 65°. The room should have half the roof, and all the south end, covered with double sashes, find the tables for flowerpots should have a border three or four inches high to hold moss sot the pots to stand in. This moss holds considerable water, and its evaporation keeps the atmosphere sufficiently moist. The floor should be of hard pine, and oiled with coal-oil once a month. After each day’s sprinkling, the floor is easily wiped dry in a minute or so; besides, the tables may be edged with half a width of oiledcloth stair-covering? and this, held up while sprinkling, will drain all the water back into the moss. Such a conservatory can be easily taken care of by one young lady, and it will give more delight and healthy occupation than all the crotcheting and embroidered pen-wiper making in a whole volume of fashion magazines. When there is repotting to be done, a newspaper spread on the floor will preserve it from the soil. Where ladies manage conservatories, they keep them clean and inviting, and there is sure to be space enough in the centre for at least two friends to sit and converse, while their senses are charmed by the odor, color, and form around them. What can be more desirable, when the earth is cold and barren, than such a little Eden in the household? - - r « - For the insects that attack house plants there should be kept a cup bf carbolic soap-suds with a little swab in it, and the plant touched with this wherever there are signs of vermin. A 'little vigilance will keep the plants-quite free from them. Such-a conservatory is within the reach of most families in comfortable circumstances; and even the poor, who have a south window and a stove that keeps the fire, can, by the aid of a-moss-table, keep thirty or forty plants in good condition the year round.— Aypietou's Journal. ■ Z