PRESENTATION

Mother Nature is every bit as fond of the little folks in her human family as of the grown-ups, and while she prepares untold joys for lovers of the outdoors among men and women and larger boys and girls, she never forgets the little ones.

For their benefit she keeps an open toy-shop full of marvellous playthings, all free to any child who wants them, and instead of the children paying her for what they take she pays them for coming to her by giving them rosier cheeks, brighter eyes, and stronger bodies. She puts more glee into their laughter and greater happiness into their trustful little hearts.

As in the large department stores in big cities, the goods in Mother Nature's shop are changed for each season of the year; so the little shoppers have constant variety and hail every new season with fresh delight. This book is written to call attention to the beautiful and wonderful things to be found in Mother Nature's toy-shop and to tell what to do with them, for one must know how to use the amusing material that is furnished.

After really getting into this most enchanting of all toy-shops with eyes open to see its wonders, we found that the difficulty to be met was not how to write about them, but how to stop writing. The display was so varied and so inviting, it seemed that we must tell the children about everything we saw, but if we had gone on seeing more and telling more there is no saying what size this book would have been.

CONTENTS

PART I

WILD FLOWERS

CHAPTER I
DAISIES

What You Can Do with Them

Wild flowers, like children, are up early. They don't want to lie abed after their long winter's sleep; they want to be awake and see what is going on in the world. While you think it is still winter there is a stirring going on under the blankets of brown earth, and sometimes before the snow is off the ground you may find the little things working up through the stiff soil and opening their eyes to the gentle spring sunshine.

It is remarkable the way the soft, tender sprouts force their way through hard ground that we would have to take a knife or trowel to dig into. But they do it. Not all at once with a great, blustering rush, but gently, steadily, and quietly they push and keep on pushing until their heads are above ground; then they begin to grow in good earnest, and pretty soon they laugh right out into blossom.

The pleasure these earliest wild flowers give us is in going out to look for them and in gathering handfuls to carry home and put into little glass bowls to be "Oh'd" over and wondered at, to be admired and loved because they are lovely, and because they bring some of the sweet outdoors of spring into the furnace-heated house.

They are too delicate and fragile, these anemones, hepaticas, and bloodroots, to be handled and played with, but later come the stronger, sturdier flowers and with many of these you can do all sorts of entertaining things. You don't have to look very far for them either. They are in the fields, by the roadsides, and even along the edges of the streets of a village or small town. You won't find them in the city.

To begin with, there are the daisies. How white the fields are with them! If they are fine, large daisies on tall, strong stems they will reach up to your waist—that is, if you are a little girl. If you are bigger they will come well above your knees. There are a number of things that you can do with them. First, you can make a really beautiful

Daisy Crown

Gather a whole lot of daisies with rather long stems. They will stay fresh longer if you put them into a pail of cool water and let them drink a little before using them; and if they have wilted while you carried them, the water will bring them up again as fresh as—why, as fresh as a daisy to be sure. This is the way to make the crown. It is a new way and a good way.

Take one daisy in your left hand and hold it, not upright but in what is called a horizontal position like the one marked A in Fig. 1, then with your right hand hold another daisy upright and place its stem in front of and across the stem of the first, as you see it in Fig. 1.

This second daisy we will call B. Now turn the stem of B under the stem of A and up at the back as it is in Fig. 2. Bring this same stem, B, around and in front of its own upright part like Fig. 3. Turn it all the way around the upright part and let the stem of B rest on top of the stem of A. Fig. 4 shows this, but in the drawing the stems are separated a little so that you may see each one plainly. It is something like weaving, you see. And it is weaving of a sort.

Across the stems of the daisies A and B, two stems this time, place the stem of another daisy that we will call C, and weave it on the first two stems exactly as you wove B onto A (Fig. 5). The stem of the fourth daisy will have to cross three stems, A, B, and C. The fifth daisy-stem will cross four stems, but after that the end of the daisy-stem A will probably have been passed and you will be weaving on the others. It depends upon the length of the stems how many are woven over; sometimes there may be five. It is not well to have more than that number. You can cut a stem off when it seems to be going too far around the crown.

Place the daisies close enough together to have their petals touch, or even crowd a trifle, because when the crown is curved and the ends brought together the flowers will separate and leave wider spaces. When you have woven enough daisies to make your crown the proper size to fit your head, cut the last stems off about two inches from the last flower and, with a strong blade of grass or piece of string, tie them to the stem of the daisy A, just back of the flower. Fig. 6 shows what the daisy crown looks like when finished.

CHAPTER II
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT

One of the earliest wild flowers to show its head above ground is Jack-in-the-pulpit. It is an odd plant and what we call the flower is not the blossom at all, but a protecting leaf called a spathe which surrounds the tiny flowers growing on the club-shaped spike (or spadix) standing upright inside.

That is a good thing to know and remember, but what concerns us now is that there is a pulpit with its curved sounding-board—or perhaps it is a striped awning—overhead, and that in the pulpit is Jack.

He is a cheerful little preacher and his pulpit is somewhat gayer than we usually see, but no one ever told Jack that to be good he must be solemn and that to preach he must have a pulpit rich and sombre. The good God who made him gave him his pretty, striped pulpit with its striped awning to shelter it, and Jack goes on preaching his cheerful sermons from this as long as he lives. Hear what some one has said of him:

Now if Jack seems to you to stand too still in his pulpit while he preaches all this, why you can make him move around. He can turn first to one side then to the other, and he can lean forward over the front with extended arms as some preachers do when they are very much in earnest.

For this you will first have to cut a hole at the back of the pulpit near the bottom, as is shown in Fig. 7, then, slipping your knife inside, cut Jack loose from the flower and drop him out from the top by turning the pulpit upside down.

Cut off the lower, thin part of the spike to which the arrow points in Fig. 8 and, after puncturing a deep hole in the end, push in a very slender twig or grass-stem. Fig. 9 shows how this is done. For arms that will make Jack seem more like a little man, push a short piece of grass-stem through the spike near the top where you see it in Fig. 9. Make a hole all the way through the spike with a pin so that the arms will slip in easily.

When you are ready for Jack to preach put him in his pulpit, sliding the grass-stem through the hole at the back. While you hold the stem of the pulpit in one hand take the grass-stem in the other and, by moving it up and down, twisting it one way, then the other, and tipping it up, you can make him rise up tall and straight, then sink down; you can make him turn to the right and to the left and lean forward. That is being active enough in such a small pulpit, isn't it?

CHAPTER III
RED AND WHITE CLOVERS

By the roadside, through the meadows, on the farm, at the cottage door, and in your own yard those dear, familiar little friends, the clover-blossoms, come to greet you. Even in city parks you may find them, and always they are ready and glad to help you have a good time. Gather a lot of these flowers and sit in the shade under a tree with your lap filled with them while I tell you how to make a

Clover Wreath

Select some long-stemmed blossoms and leaves, bunch them and bind their stems together their full length with strong grass or string. Wind the grass around and around the stems, tucking the ends securely in under the last wind. You may need several long blades of grass for binding one bunch.

In the same way make a second bunch and fit the flowers up close against the first bunch of blossoms, with their stems lying along the side of the first stems. Do not lap the flowers of one bunch over the flowers of another. Fasten the second bunch in place by binding the stems to those of the first bunch; then make a third bunch and bind it on next to the second bunch. Continue making these clover bunches and binding their stems to the stems of those already a part of the wreath until the strip is long enough to fit around your head. Try it on and, if it is the proper length, join the two ends by binding the last stems to the stems of the first bunches. Fig. 10 shows the clover wreath complete.

Clover Earrings

Take one of these clovers and fit it in tight between your cheek and the lobe of your ear (Fig. 12). Be careful not to break the long stem, for you must bring it up snugly just back of your ear along the line where the ear joins your head, and when this is done, bend the end of the stem down gently over the top of your ear. The stem will hold your earring in place. Make the other earring in the same way. The two clover-blossoms used for the earrings should be as much alike as possible both in size and shape. They should be matched carefully, as pearls and diamonds are matched in a pair of real earrings.

Now for a "solitaire"

Clover Ring

A Necklace of Clover

Now you are ready, with the addition of a long, straight twig, at the top of which you have fastened a bouquet of clover, to play that you are queen of all the clover fairies, and that your clover-tipped twig is your magic wand.

Other Things of Clover

The running, vinelike clovers are fine to use for climbing-roses on outdoor doll-houses. They can also be trained over the doll garden-frames and arches.

CHAPTER IV
CLOVER DESIGNS

Have you ever admired the pretty patterns on wallpaper of flowers and green leaves? Have you ever embroidered dainty designs in colors on white linen, and do you love it all? If you do, you will like to make some designs yourself in a new way, and with real flowers and real leaves.

You don't have to know how to draw or to paint in this designing, for the flowers are there ready for you to use, more exquisitely drawn and colored than the greatest artist could do them. Your part is to group and arrange them on a sheet of paper so that they will form beautiful designs; designs that will not only delight you, but that may be copied in embroidery or in other ways.

Merely to place the flowers on the paper in some sort of a pattern is interesting, but the design won't last because the flowers won't stay in place. Your sleeve may wipe them all off, or a puff of air blow them away, so a method has been invented especially for you that will keep them where you want them to stay, and that method is simply to paste them there.

You can make designs of almost any kind of flowers, the common pink-and-white clover that grows underfoot nearly everywhere makes a particularly pretty one. This is the long-stemmed, viny kind, and its name is alsike clover. Fig. 15 shows what the alsike clover looks like, and you will see that its leaves are rather pointed at the tip, and shaped more like the leaves of the large red clover than like the almost round ones of the little white clover.

The graceful, upright design (Fig. 16) was made of the alsike clover, the blossom of which was a deep-rose color, and the original design when finished looked like a piece of embroidery done in silks. It was so lovely I wish that it could be given in its natural colors here.

Look at Fig. 16 carefully and see that while the sprays of clover at the right and left appear to be exactly alike, though turned in opposite directions, they are not really so, and the little differences help to make the design interesting. They keep it from being what we call monotonous. Now look at D, E, and F, Fig. 17. These are tracings of the sprays of clover before they were grouped together to form the design Fig. 16. The spray on the left, marked D, is just as it grew and as it was used in the finished design; but F, on the right, had to have the little budded spray added at the place on the stem shown by the arrows to make it resemble and balance the other. This bud with its leaves was clipped from another clover-vine.

The spray in the centre of the design was like E, Fig. 17, and it was necessary to give it the extra leaves shown at its right because, without them, it was not symmetrical, which means evenly balanced, and it would not have looked well in the design.

When all of the material was collected and ready to be put together, the central spray, E, was laid in the middle of a sheet of unruled, white paper with the lower end of the stem near the bottom edge, then the sprays D and F were placed on the right and left of the centre one and tried first in one position, then in another, until it was decided that they looked best arranged as in Fig. 16. After that the extra leaves for the middle spray, and the bud and its leaves for the right-hand spray, were put in place.

It all seemed charmingly satisfactory, so the design was taken apart that it might be fastened permanently in place. The middle spray had to be adjusted first, and a drop of good library paste was put on the under-side of the clover-blossom, a drop on the under part of each leaf, and on the under part of the stem at the lower end. Then the spray was laid in the middle of the paper just where it was at first, and pressed down to make it stick. Paste was put on the under part of each of the three leaves to be added and on the under part of their stem at the end, and they were pasted down to look as if growing on the main stem, opposite the other leaves.

Fig. 18 is a running design of clovers which can be used for a border. The little arrows on Fig. 19 show where the different parts are joined.

The large red clover was used for the design Fig. 20 and the leaves and buds of the red clover for Fig. 21. Fig. 22 shows how the parts of Fig. 21 are put together. These drawings are all original from designs actually made of fresh clover-blossoms and their foliage.

CHAPTER V
OTHER WILD-FLOWER DESIGNS

Daisy Fleabane Design

Isn't the design Fig. 23 what grown-ups call Japanesque? Doesn't it look as if it had been copied from a printed pattern on a piece of Japanese cotton cloth?

The illustration Fig. 24 shows how the daisy fleabane looks when first gathered. Sometimes the blossom is entirely white, sometimes it is tinged with purple, and it has a bright-yellow centre. Its petals are as fine as a fringe, like those of the asters that blossom in the fall.

In making the design the full-blown flowers were pressed down flat, which makes them round like a sunflower, while the buds and partly open flowers were left as they naturally grew. The composition, or arrangement, of this design is like that used for the upright clover design (Fig. 16), that is, it has two tall side sprays and a shorter middle spray; but see how very different the two designs are in appearance. The clover is all graceful curves, the daisy fleabane is stiff and formal with straight lines and angles.

If you use the white flower, make the design on a sheet of tinted paper, else the flower will not show. All white flowers should have tinted paper for a background.

Wild Mustard Design

The small, yellow blossoms of the wild mustard and its compound leaves make very dainty designs. Fig. 25 is one of them.

From the drawing of the wild mustard (Fig. 26) you will see that the flowers do not grow close to the leaves as they are placed in this design, but on tall stems which lift them far above the scattered leaf-sprays. The design Fig. 25 was made by cutting off a number of flower-clusters and leaves, and grouping first one flower-cluster and one leaf-spray together, with the ends of their stems touching, then another flower-cluster and another leaf-spray. The arrows in Fig. 27 show where the stems are brought together, and the design Fig. 25 shows how the joining of the first two is covered with one of the small leaves of the second leaf-spray, and how the joining of the second two is hidden under a leaf of the third leaf-spray, and so on.