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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1951-08-02, Page 3.> l /�,! UNI . .�wtl et Obrdon Smi.l:h. When the spring pageant of bloom has passed) in the rock gar- den, it - is time to give attention to problems of summer maintenance. Supplying water and a proper top - dressing, besides giving care to individual groups of plants. is neces- sary for the future growth of the garden as well asits immediate ap- • vcarance, * * It is of' utmost importance to wa- ter the rock garden thoroughly at regular intervals dur'ng- the summer months. Hot sun and drying winds •draw a copious amount of water from the soil, If the rocks are of A porous, absorbent nature, they too attract their share .of moisture away from the roots of adjacent plants... The more elaborately con- •structed rock garden will probably have an underground watering sys- tem, making the job, of watering •consist merely of turning on a fau- cet. The humbler garden will re- quire the use of a hose.- If. the spray is directed skyward, the drops will fall gently on the plants in a semblance of rain. It is best if the watering is done at 'tight and the -entire area thoroughly soaked. The older rock garden especially will benefit from a topdressing of a nutritious soil. The compost heap will provide better . material. than ordinary topsoil because of its high organic content, Put through a quarter -inch sieve, it should have a quart of bonemeal mixed into every basketful. Rock. garden plants will, in fact, appreciate a top dressing annually. If the prepared soil is distributed between the plants and lightly cul- tivated into the surface, rains and waterings will carry its elements to the roots where it will be used to advantage. For plants that are exacting in diet, such as the azaleas; rhododen- drons and others that demand an acid soil, a good topdressing can he collected in a wooded spot where the leafy soil has been broken down to a fine texture through years of slow decomposition. If such leaf - mold is not available, baled peat can be substituted. The line -lovers, on the other hand, notably the saxifrages, need • a dressing of line. The encrusted types show a marked lime encrusta- tion at the edges of their leaves when they are satisfactorily fed, Mortar taken from old buildings that are being torn down makes an excellent dressing for then when ` crushed fine and put through a sieve. Second choice of material is ground crushed limestone. * * * All of the hard -leaved saxifrages look most at home when the ground between the plants is covered with three -eighths -inch bluestone such as is used for pathways. The color of the stone gives a pleasing effect as a background for the leaves, The bluestone also aids in conservation of soil Moisture. The mossy saxifrages will re- si)ond best to a mixture of leafmold and sharp sand, Established plant- ings from such dense mats that it is necessary to part the rosettes in order to work the topdressing into the soil. t; * * Some of the rock garden plants which flowered in early spring, such as adonis and the various kinds of corydalis, will soon be losing their foliage completely, It is there- fore wise to mark the spot before they disappear for the season, lest the planting of bulbs in those seem- ingly vacant places result in injury to the hidden roots. * * * Spring -flowering bulbs themselves iL MAO Cloth Can't Be Licke Acetate Tablecloth Is Easily Laundered 713x1 EDNA bums THE alert homemaker, always on the look --out for fresh accessories to brighten her home, may well cast her eye in the directionof li new damask tablecloth and napkins recently introduced by a well-known firm. This cloth, which may care her interest through—virtue of long-lasting brightness and laundering ease, should re- ceive a vote from the junior department of the family as well. • Lollipop stripes in red, leaf green, yellow, blue, mint • green—all on a white background—are sufficiently gay to. appeal to all age groups, Made of acetate rayon yarn, the cloth lends itself well to either party occasions or simple family ideals, 'depending upon the formality of the table setting. There's no need to worry about accidents, either, makers claim. Lipstick marks or fruit stains on cloth and napkins rinse right out with a gentle sudsing, they say» need attention now. As soon as their' foliage has turned completely yel- low—but not before—it may be cut •off. By this time the leaves will have served their usefulness in the manufacture of food and the de- velopment of a tiny bud inside tire bull) for next year's growth, Their locations also should be marked, unless they have been growing up through the mantling green of such Plants as arenaria or Phlox subul- ata where they will not be disturbed. * * * Flowers which have passed their beauty should, for appearance's sake, be cut off finless, like the' pasque flower and dryas, they have decor- ative seedlteads or unless the seeds are wanted for propagation, Pods of the little alpine poppy, for ex- ample, can be left to ripen, and the seeds then scattered in the vicinity of the parent. plant, there to sprout and mature. Going Much Too Far Just what are labor unions after anyway? They scream about high prices. Yet , they demand higher wages. They want price control but no wage control. Now Winnipeg provides a ',ittta- tion which if it weren't so serious, would border on the ludicrous. A food store has been selling bread below its competitors. The CCL Bakery Workers' union in- stead of. cheering for something they've been. Ioudly demanding, ordered its drivers not to deliver to the store! Why? Because, says the union in a letter to its members, the store is practising "unfair competition" by cutting the retail price and thereby jeopardizing the - earnings of unionized salesmen. What's more, the union has told the major bakeries not to • supply bread to the price -lowering "offen- der," Not asked' then—warned them not to. Knowing what would hap- , pen if they didn't, the bakeries knuckled under. We have had many cases of unions flouting the law in the mat- ter of strikes, but this sort of thing goes even further. Here we have direct and totally unjustified inter- ference with the ordinary 'citizen in the matter of buying bread. And recent]¢ we had the same sort of interference in Toronto with the buying of milk and earlier with the disposal of garbage in Hamilton. In addition to being a dangerous misuseof power the unions con- cerned are demonstrating a callous disregard for the general public and making a mockery of their national leader's plea for lower prices and lower costs.—Front The Financial Post. Social Note. In North East, Pa., the Breeze announced that "Dick Campbell, son of Mr. and Mrs, C. P. Campbell, has accepted a position as private in the U.S. Army." HAROLD ARNETT NOOKS 4N Off SCREWp INTO 80 TOM OF VENETIAN SLINOS AND IN WINDOW SILL AT BOTTOM, PREVENT BLINDS FROM l Atrn.gwG•, . At this -season .of the year, ,fault- ers—except the "gentlemen" kind— haven't ntucli time to. discuss mat- ters political. and economical. But when two or three of then, do get together the conversation is almost bound.- sooner or later to drift around to the matter of price con-• trols. * * * In a column of this nature, it is hardly my place to take a definite' stand, either pro or con, regarding controls or ceilings, Of course, the ideal condi.tiow would be to. have everything I buy strictly controlled and everything I produce with the sky as the limit; but that's too much to hope for in an imperfect world, 1 imagine. But as the, pap-. ular song puts it. "T can dream can't 1?" * Stfiously' enough, there's so much. to be said both for and against that it's hard for the aver- age brain to come tb any definite conclusion. Put perhaps an idea of what is happening in this re-' gard far away in .Australia night be a: help; , and the following is taken •from a recent dispatch—sent by an observer with ne axe to grind—front Sydney: He starts by saying that 'public confidence in the present Aussie system of partial price control is definitely slipping, and that this type of control over the national price structure scents unworkable. y: i, * Potatoes, for example. which Are presently controlled at six cents' a pound, are openly priced on' the streets at 16 cents. But nobody re- ports • this' flouting of the law. * a: The reason is that many Aus- tralians feel . that the present par- tial control system is doing more harm than' good, actually curtailing production which would otherwise exert.. its. own control of prices un- der supply and demand laws. * At least, the Potato Marketing Board for -New South Wales and the Potato Growers' Association convinced of that argument. They are buying newspaper space telling . why, • These advertisers h o 1 d that "New South Wales potato growers fear and distrust the present price control system, They are clearly demonstrating their unwillingness to produce for =payable returns, • by abandoning the industry at the' rate of many scores per month." * * Such claims are supported by the fact that potatoes have been scarce for some time. Some stores keep them as a "prize" (at a price) for customers, placing large orders for other goods., But this news is pub- licized only its whispers. * • "These facts," declares the potato industry, "lead inevitably to the question that price control in its laudable aim of keeping down the cost of living, makes profitable pro- duction of potatoes impossible and unduly increases the weekly house- hold food bills." * * * The potato control story is just • • one more instance of what happens when controls operate in a discrim- inatory fashion, In the potato in- ' dustry's case, 'uncontrolled and ris- ing' wage costs, for example, are borne by 'profit narg:ns and can- not be transferred to consumers because of price control roadblocks. Result: profits shrink and encour- 'age black Markets. * * 1- Another instance of price control boomeranging on the consumer it is supposed to protect is seen in the •big Australian cattle industry. * * * Price control on the sale of hides. for. domestic use and for export, was originally made with the idea of keeping down the price of foot - Wear to A ustralians. Consequently, as general production costs climbed in the cattle industry, hides became unprofitable to handle, But the re- sult was to force up the price of beef in industry attempts to recover its losses under hide control. * * * The alleged injustice of the con- trol position was emphasized by industry sources who demonstrated that less than half of Australia's leather production went into foot- wear. • The major balance was used in the automobile, handbag, and other leather -using industries, These sources pointed out it was never intended that the hide control law should "subsidize" these leather users in this way. •Thus expensive beef also can be traced to cheap handbags and car cushions. a- * * From their experiences with con- trol of hides and potatoes, many Australians have drawn the con- clusion that partial controls can get out of hand .in the strangest ways, with the consumer paying dearly for the experiment. * * 9: lature.. The L stitutiost, The gOvernmtheThis the name of national security, a power already within u. * * This means that labour and Lib- eral views on the need for "Com- r»trehensive" controls differ only m the time factor. The Labourites would intro du ce a "permanent" setup; the erals a "temporary" one, The ral's approach, thus "private born of enterprise" and the Labourites' that of doctrinaire socialism. %".lila young another plane a gay 'Meal for her family. Lollipop -striped tablecloth and centerpiece of fresh daisies help make )least of the wimple fare. Forges Signatures For Her Living Ingenuity seems to he the fem- inine characteristic when choosing a job. Unlike most of the male sex, women seem unwilling to enter the stock profess:ons. Take Madeline Lee, for instance. This 27 -year-old New Yorker is producer of baby language. An ac- complished actress, she spends tnost of her working day emitting coos and gurgles over the radio. In order to be sound perfect, she has sat for long hours in the park listening to children prattling and crying in their prams. Another American woman, mid- dle-aged Felicie King, is a forger of film star's signatures. Many celebrities of the screen receive so may requests for autographs that they wer m w's cramp iF thouldey fulfsuf}illed frothem alt.riter That's where Miss King comes in. She can imitate anyone's sig- nature. Miss King lends her hand to notabilities in many fields. She even signed gift portraits for the late President Roosevelt during his first election campaign, Also in the United States lives the Baroness de Vries Doesburg, who is a professional finder of miss- ing heirs. No research is too long or too difficult for her, Once the only clue to a bene- ficiary under a Canadian million- aire's will was that he had hawked brushes from door to door. The Baroness wrote to all the leading brush manufacturers in Canada, U.S.A. and Great Britain. At last the reply came from the head of one of these firnlS, +tY expect you mean me," This 'dtari was in no need of a legacy: he had made good himself. Americans, of course, have al- ways been good at thinking up new and unusual occupations, A Miami hotel now has a corps of "wake-up girls," who replace alarm clocks' and the shrilling of tele- phone bells. When guests wish to be called in. the morning., these girls sing outside the bedroom door. If a heavy sleeper continues to snore, the girls have a nice line of patter about bow wonderful the weather is and how pleasant it is to be up. 9900 -Year-old Turtle Believed to be the largest in the world, a 900 -year-old turtle has been caught by two Australian deep-sea fishermen. It' is seven feet eight inches long and was caught off the New South Wales coast near Bersnagui, Previously the record for size was held by a turtle which is now in the Sydney Museum. This is six feet seven inches long and estimated to be more than 800 years old. Best-known species of turtle is the Green Turtle, which conies mainly from the 'Vest Indies for shaking turtle soup. There are several ways of catch- ing it, but the usual one is for a diver to be lowered on a rope to scour the bottom of the sea and the sandy beds. Itfost ingenious way is used by natives, who lower a large sucker fish into the water and hope that 'it attaches itself to the turtle's shell. The turtle's habit of floating on top of water, sound asleep, also gives natives a chance to harpoon them, or to catch the female when she come an shore to lay her eggs in the sand. Mother turtle finds some quiet island with a sandy shore, then waddles ashore just far enough to be safe from the high tides. There she digs a hole in the sand, using her hind legs as spades, and deposits her eggs. The sand -nest is usually about thirty inches deep, and after the 'eggs are laid tate mother carefully fills in the hole with dry sand, and smooths the top so that no marks give away the nest. Then she returns to the sea and her eggs are hatched by the sun, The young turtles are very small —about the size of an ordinary frog—but a steady diet of fish and seaweed transforms then into en- ormous monsters weighing 300 lbs. and more, Turtles are helpless when they are overturned on to their shell, or "turned turtle". Those used for the turtle soup at banquets are usually about twen- ty years old and weigh 200 lb. each. Facing Up To It --New arnong toys being readied for next Christ- mas is the "scribbles" .doll, which literally can have a thousand faces. The molded plastic face has no features. These are ad- libbed in by the doll's young mistress, as five-year-old Christine Du Rona demonstrates. The doll was shown at a recent preview of outstanding toys. ilirER ArAROY, JI TEZ, PAt)ALtI~i OVER TO THE a MOORINf SUOY, p• -- ��t,I 'OoaN'7' SHE 1.00K eNba v SINCE WE PAINTED HER? Y•YES, Biir r kl 'EF' HAVING A FEELING THAT WE FORGOT SOMETHING. By Arthur Pohl it wASN'r CALRIN6 Tits skits wAs 11; pop?