Mother Nature's Toy-Shop

PRESS your thumb on the rounded edge of a fresh, fat green pea-pod, and, pop! it goes splitting open at the top. Then push your thumb into the opening, run it down the pod and t...

REAL people live in grass houses way off in the Philippine Islands. That is, their houses are made of bamboo, which is a kind of giant grass. It must be a pretty airy, comfortab...

You can see one of our long, rude puncheon tables spread out in the mild, sweet air of Indian summer, laden with delectable dishes of clam chowder, oysters, fish, turkey, duck,...

WHEN the apple-trees are in bloom, stand under one and look up through the wonderful tent of flowers at the little bits of blue sky peeping down at you between the blossoms. Isn...

THE arrangement of flowers is interesting and means a great deal. It means that this chapter will tell you what wild flowers look prettiest on the dinner-table and in bowls and...

NOW let us build a little woodsy house of burrs (Fig. 124) and put it in a little garden. Gather two heaping handfuls of large-sized burdock-burrs, small ones are not strong eno...

VEGETABLES are good to eat, certainly, and you know what they are like when cooked and on the dinner-table; but many are also good to play with. You can make fine toys of them,...

WE all welcome and love the dear little pussy-willows (Fig. 29) whose fur is so soft and silvery. How pretty they look sitting along the slender, bare branches of the small Amer...

Select a small, firm, perfect orange and with a pencil mark features on it, first the eyes like Fig. 199. Carefully cut out the little spaces of skin between the lines, then mar...

TO dress up and pretend is something every little girl, and boy too, for that matter, likes to do, and there is no better place for having this kind of fun and no greater storeh...

NUTS are the seed-vessels of the nut-trees; did you ever think of that? They do not grow only that we may have something delicious to eat. They ripen and fall on the ground, whe...

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...

Of course, you know the rose-haws, the little red and yellow and green apples that you find on the rose-bushes in the fall. They are the seed-vessels of the rose, and every rose...

All children love the clean, glossy, brown horse-chestnuts or buckeyes. There are so many buckeye-trees in Ohio that it is called the Buckeye State, and many villages of Long Is...

DO you know the cultivated foxglove with its tall spikes of thimble-shaped flowers, prettily spotted inside? (Fig. 94.) And do you know that these flowers will fit on the ends o...

Fig. 155 is a baby alligator with a sweet-potato body and paper head and legs. It is just the size of the little alligators they sell for pets down in Florida. That is, the alli...

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...

REMARKABLY pretty designs can be made entirely of green leaves; also with leaves and their seed-pods, their nuts and berries. You can press a design of leaves alone, but one hav...

As you know, the blossom is trumpet-shaped and flares at the open end into five petals. The tube part is long and narrows to a point, so it is easy to push one flower into anoth...

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...

WHEN Miss Hollyhock gives a garden-party the scene is a gay one. All the ladies, and you can have as many as you want, are in their freshest, crispest summer gowns. There are da...

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...

Well, it was not. It is from a design made especially for you of real wild flowers, freshly gathered. The name of the flower is the daisy fleabane which grows in almost all open...

DAFFODILS, yellow as sunshine, always come with the beautiful springtime. The blossoms of the single daffodils, with their tall, golden cups resting in the saucers of lighter-co...

LOOK at the little girl in the photograph who is wearing her new grass dress made of the wavy hair-grass and playing that she is a wood-nymph. She feels very proud and is greatl...

SOME of our grasses appear like very large trees to the little grass fairies who, we like to pretend, hide in their midst; while other grasses, with their jointed, bamboo-like s...

A WILD-GRAPE leaf will do quite as well as a cultivated one for a drinking-cup if it is large enough. You want a large leaf, because a small one will hold only a sip of water, a...

XXII. THINGS YOU CAN MAKE OF LIMA BEANS 123 XXIII. SWEET-POTATO ALLIGATOR AND WHAT TO MAKE OF A RADISH 130 XXIV. GREEN-PEA TOYS AND A GREEN-PEA DESIGN 136 XXV. CORN-HUSKS AND CO...

CHAPTER PAGE I. DAISIES 1 II. JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT 5 III. RED AND WHITE CLOVERS 8 IV. CLOVER DESIGNS 12 V. OTHER WILD-FLOWER DESIGNS 19 VI. PUSSY-WILLOWS 24 VII. ARRANGEMENT OF FL...