Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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porch boxes have been drafted into service. The sight of lettuce and radishes growing lustily in the front yard is a pleasant relief from the not uncommon combination of petunias and salvias. Three hundred home gardeners entered the garden contest and about one hundred and fifty vacant lot gardeners wished to compete. When the judges learned the number of visits they would have to make, they said, “Call us ‘slackers’ if you must, but how can we visit four hundred and fifty gardens?’’ But it has been clone. The prospects for more gardens in 1918 are very encouraging as already requests have been sent in for assignments for next year. Ruth LaGanke, Class of 1916. CONSERVATION OF COAL IN GREENHOUSES. The four greenhouses at Ambler used to burn a hundred tons of coal per season. Last year this amount was reduced to forty tons, whilst, at the same time, the income from the greenhouses was almost doubled. This happened before the days when economy was popular; but now we can tell to sympathetic ears how the feat was achieved and the coal bill for the greenhouses diminished to half. Just four very simple rules were followed: 1. Lower temperatures in the houses to the great improvement in color or scent and health of the plants. 2. Low fires on mild days and nights irrespective of the month these happen to occur. This was always a safe saver. 3. Keeping low fires in the morning even after cold nights when anticipating sunny days. 4. Early closing of the ventilators to retain the sun's heat when anticipating cold nights. Briefly then, in stoking, use the natural heat of the sun and thy intelligence. 10 Edna M. Gunnell.

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(An (01]tu (Eiiu (A-CSarbrntnq, Ihe following article, written last July, shows the work of one of our graduates.—(Editor.) When the appeal for war gardens was made this spring, the people of Akron rallied at once to the call with plow and spade,and war gardening became as exciting as the hazardous nature of its name implies. 1 he enlistment into Akron’s Home-Garden Division of the General Army of Defense has far exceeded all estimates. The garden movement is not new in the Rubber City. For several years “The Beacon Journal,’’ Akron's leading newspaper, has sponsored, not only home and vacant lot gardens, but the school gardens as well. This year, with the increased interest in gardening, the staff, thinking it advisable to establish a garden department which should organize the garden work of the city, selected two trained horticulturists to direct this undertaking. They furnish information to garden recruits; conduct a clearing house for vacant lots; manage the school gardens, and conduct a home, vacant lot, and school garden contest. The “spring rush” was strenuous, to say the least. Through this office, war garden signs and several hundred Food Garden primers, published by the National Food Emergency Commission, have been distributed. Garden advice is published daily in the paper. I he school gardens have been maintained for several years, with the “Beacon Journal” as administrative head, by funds contributed by a group of wealthy business men who are interested in this proposition which means so much educationally, socially and economically. But the most productive school plot will not furnish sufficient vegetables for a not infrequent family of seven and four boarders. Such families solved the problem of supply by applying to the “Journal” for a vacant lot. with the result that nearly two hundred people throughout the city arc gardening on lots offered through the garden department. Nothing seemed to daunt these people, no matter what the condition of the lot might be, so eager were they to plant some beans or potatoes. In many cases, father, mother, the boarders and all the children had to set to work to carry off more bushels of stones and tin cans to the acre than they may ever hope to gather in potatoes. The two hundred gardens assigned by the “Journal” represent only a small part of the land that has been reclaimed. All the rubber companies have opened up large tracts for their employes and the Northern Ohio Traction Company offered 75 acres of their right of way for garden purposes. The eight-hour working schedule allows several hours a day for work in the war gardens. The home gardeners have shown the same ingenuity in making use of every bit of available ground. Front yards, the space between the sidewalks, abandoned excavations, former flower beds, and even 9

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Py ilje tUErracc in darken All the long golden summer afternoons as 1 gardened in the narrow stretch of border ground by the terrace, I watched the littie mud wasp at work upon her home. Back and forth she flew, bearing each time the minutest bit of clay to add to the structure of her dwelling What industry, what mother instinct she displayed as bit by bit she shaped the little cone-like form which was to hold the myriad, clustered cells. And then, when the cells were all perfected, she would venture forth to capture and paralyze with her swift sting the prey whereon would be laid the precious eggs. Each time as she returned, and, hovering about the spot, at length alighted and crawled up into the interior, still cool and moist with the dampness of the clay, I could hear her busy workings as with saw»-hke sounds she firmly pressed and shaped the clay. Day by day I watched her as she passed me, her wings darting their iridescence of blue and black and gold in the sunlight—until one afternoon she failed to come. All the countryside lay wrapped in hazy sunshine and the breezes moved lovingly among the branches and waved in sweet rhythm the flowers at my feet, and in all peace and beauty, 1 missed the busy sounds and bright darting of the little mud wasp. The half-formed cone was dry and baked in the heat of the noon day and no little builder came to finish out the form. And at my work I mused and wondered what had kept her. Then that evening, as 1 walked along the country roadside, I passed a little stream and there as I crossed it I found in a deep hollow in the mud made by the press of a heavy foot, the poor crushed body of a little mud wasp. I stooped and took it in my palm. Ah! could it be that it was the little builder by my terrace? All the glossy beauty of the wings was smeared and crumpled and the little body had lain there hurt and mangled where she had so busily been gathering the plaster for her home. My poor little mud wasp, all your hopes and labors cherished by your instinct, dulled forever! And still the dried half-finished structure hangs upon the terrace bv my garden waiting for the builder to return. ' ‘ L. E. C. 11