After being servantless for séverat weeks, except for the _somewha: Goubtful assistance of the ladies wh come by the day "to oblige"—our household has an apparently firm offer of a cook and parlour-maid to come to us next month. These weeks have taught us several things.
We found plenty of companions in distress, Indeed the peculiarity 0: our position was not that we could maids for $0 lon in seven years previous! only eight maids three*of whom left only to get married. This is considered a record. Inside London or Tong way from it, maids are not dificult to get. On the periphery, the average length of stay in any plac ig said to be four months.
Once going over to a village some six miles from our home, in answer to an advertisement by two maids in the county weekly paper, the head of our house was told that, on the morning when the advertisement appeared there was a queue of cars Outside the house where the two titis were working by half-past nine!
We heard much of the domestic training centres that have been established tu the distressed areas of Wales and the North. The iris, of coure:, would still need some drilling, but they were carefully vouched for by the centres. and such nice girls, cheerful, willing, only too glad to get Into a good home, ete, etc.
We wrote to five of these centres The earliest date at which any them was likely to have girls able was the end of October. Every centre had a Jong waiting list of mis. tresses. The demand everywhere {a-exceeded the supply.
The most successful garden, taking it all the year round, is tone in which deciduous trees, evergreens, flowering bushes and. shrubs, perennials and hardy annals are combined with balance and judgment. Spring flowering bulbs also must not be forgotten, When preparing to lay out flower beds az mized borders the choice of plants should fall more or less evenly between perennials and hardy annuals. Anchusa, phlox. Spanish iris, aquilegia and shasta daisies may well be the chosen perennials, set here and there along the middle line and behind it, while the foreground and spaces between the perennials, is Kept for hardy annuals such' as snap dragons, pinks, o-eve daisies, viscose, gypsophila, nemophila, ete.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.