The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., October 15, 1910, Page 706, Image 6

About The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
THE HOME CIRCLE
ULYSSES.
IT LITTLE profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees; all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea; I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravel’d wmrld, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star.
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done.
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho*
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
t. j§f —Alfred Tennyson.
HOW TO FIX UP THE FRONT YARD.
“An Attractive Farm Home Will Do as Much as a Profitable
Cotton Crop to llring Happiness anil Contentment to the Dwell
ers Upon the Farm.”
By Nn. F. L. Stevens.
► “Go forw»rde In the nams of God (traffe. Be*.
plant, and nouriehe up trees in every corner of
your grounde."
MUCH OF the time and effort
of experts along agricultural
lines is given to the discus
sion of the pecuniary side of the
farming question. The earning
power of the
farm is without
doubt the great
est single prob
lem of the farm,
but it is not all
of farming. An
attractive farm
home will do as
touch as a profit
able cotton crop
to bring happi
ness and contentment to the dwell
ers upon the farm. Great numbers
of farmers earn enough as it is, but
they have not learned the knack of
doing things in the greatest econ
omy of time and effort; consequent
ly the farm home comes in for a
very small share of attention. Suc
cessful and enjoyable farming, as I
have seen it, depends not so much
jpon raising a successful corn crop
n order to acquire more money or
more land as upon the attitude of
the farmer toward the things with
which he deals and lives.
One means of making farm life
more attractive is to brighten the
home grounds with good, tasteful
planting. A yard is primarily for
use. Especially is this true with us
who live in the South. Notwith
standing this fact, many of us are
inclined to the idea that the func
tion of the front yard is to display
the house and that the back yard
fulfills its mission as a place for
the clothes-line, the washing outfit,
ashes, scraps of lumber, tin cans,
arid other waste. The usual farm
back yard is a dumping ground for
all kinds of waste and is frequently
as unwholesome as it is unsightly.
Have a Good Lawn.
When we come to regard the en
tire yard as a place to live in, with
each space set off to its use exactly
as the rooms of a house, then are
we going to realize the possibilities
for use, comfort and beauty in the
farm premises.
The key to beautiful home
grounds is the lawn. Any smooth.
;rassy surface suitably bounded is
m object of admiration. A house is
made important not only by Us own
size, but by the size of the lawn in
front of it. The beauty of tbe lawn
is its unbroken character, end any
thing that destroys this, destroys the
lawn. The rule is to keep the cen
ter absolutely clear with the excep
tion possibly of trees.
A common belief prevails that
grass will not flourish in the shade
of large trees, and so people often
excuse the barren, wind-swept
lawn by saying that grass and trees
will not flourish on the same space,
and that they prefer trees. Now.
the facts are that practically the
only place that the beautiful blue
grass does flourish in the South is in
the shaded lawn. Trees with sur
face roots offer rather serious ob
stacles to the growing of grass; but
as successful lawn grass as I have
ever seen has been cultivated on a
lawn thickly studded with maples.
The trouble with the lawn Is that
the seed bed is too shallow. A first
class lawn can not be made without
fi or 8 inches of good soil. With
the yard well drained, 3 to 6 inches
or ciay, over which im-re ib .u
four inches of soil made rich by
cowpeas and good stable manure,
no good reason exists for the pres
ence of the broom-swept, cheerless
front yards too common among us.
How to Plant the Shade Tree*.
Since the front yard should above
all, be useful, a first essential is
trees, not for appearance merely,
but for shade and protection. While
we wish to aim at the first principle
of landscape gardening by keeping
the center of the lawn an open space,
yet the harsh straight lines of many
farm houses would be broken aid
the place Improved by a tree ia the
front of the house, which at the
same time gives shade Just where it
is needed. Another place for a tree
is near a corner of the yard, not
directly in line with another tree at
the opposite corner, but so that the
two form a frame to the house. If it
is possible to plant several trees,
good taste in planting decrees that
they should not be in straight rows.
Every effort should be made in ar
ranging the home yard to observe
the type followed by nature in wood
land planting. There is a delight
ful sense of irregularity and hap
pen-so in the woodland type.
If my suggestions of the early
spring upon the Improvement of the
farm home have been followed, fine
types of woodland trees in the neigh
borhood have already been selected
and a little later may be transferred
to the new surroundings. If that
has not been done there is still time
■
to make selections, always bearing
in mind that the most substantial
and hardiest trees are best. There
is no better tree than the American
elm which has all the desirable
finalities of hardiness, size, cleanli
ness and beauty of form. The
American lindens are hardy, have
beauty of contour and are rapid
growers. Considerable interest Just
now in the South is being attached
to the growth of tho pecan and
other nut trees. The pecan in par
ticular is a handsome tree, a rapid
grower and ofTers in the end most
substantial returns for its "board
and keep.”
Suggestions ns to Vines and Plants.
The most important and at the
same time unrecognized plant serv
ing as a beautifler of the home place
Is the vine. It’s mission is twofold.
Its graceful festoons cover the
harsh angles of the house and the
unsightly spots about the grounds.
This brings tho house into harmony
with Its environment. A house Is at
best merely a box set down In the
midst of a landscape. Something
must bring the two into harmony.
Shrubbery masses set about the
angles and arranged to cover the
hare spnees about tho foundation
help in this respect, but vines d®
more and with belter effect. They
I
Hu» an !<W Kpworth Gor orator. and aarura
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promtaoo whorwor noodod. No a (tor rapaira.
ar d kaa attention than ano karnaama lamp. A
conrantanca you nowd. Writ# ua today.
IDEAL EPWORTH ACETYLENE CO.
JOHNSTOWN. PA.
dont pay two prices -t
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