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[Entered at the Post urriCE. in Atlanta, ukoeuia. von thammuhtation thhouuh the Unitkd BtateA mails at rkc-unu clam Hat km.] twice A month.} YOL. II. ATLANTA, GA., NOVEMBER 15, 1882. o J ONE DOLLAR -NO. H. \ A YEAR. HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA, BY HELEN HARCOUBT. Sixth Paper. Unking n Horae, One of the hardest things for a Northerner to bear on first coming to Florida, is the ab sence of the beautiful green turf and lawn, so familiar to his sight that no country home seems half a home without this grate ful resting-place for the eyes. We are used to seeing it ail around our old homes and in great fields all over the land, and because wc do not see the same in this newly-settled country the cry has been raised, “grass will not grow in Florida.” Now that is a great mistake, and a great injustice done to a State that only wants a chance given her to show what she canr do in the way of raising grasses. If the fine lawn grasses so abundant now, in the old settled Northern States, are in- digenous and grow of themselves, just where they are wan^ 1 as some unreasonable peo ple seem to expect they should do in Florida, how is it that the seedsmen advertise “ lawn grass” seeds for sale, and the agricultural papers are so particular each year to give full directions as to the proper way of pre paring the ground, and sowing the seed for making lawns ? We have spent a great many months ot our life in the country at the North, and we never yet saw a piece of woodland that hud never been cleared, plowed or planted, that could be utilized as a ready-made pasture for cattle; where we see green fields and mead ows, the gross has been .sowed there; it has not sprung up by magic, and it has required a good many years and a great deal of care to make a good pasture at all. Yet much-ma ligned Florida, even in her uncleared virgin woodlands, does raise a grass that subsists hundreds of thousands of cattle all the year round, so that their owners are never at one dollar of expense to keep them. This is the fumous wiregrass that grows evetywhere in the piney woods, tender and nutritious when young, but tough enough when old. It grows in tufts ; starting out from the root in early spring, and keeps on growing os fast as the cattle eat it, until late in the fall, when it grows more slowly and the cattle are apt to leave it and seek the moss-draped hammocks for two or three months. Florida has other grasses too that are des tined before long to supply her with all the hay’she needs, some native, others imported we shall speak of them fully by-and-by, but at present we shall only speak of those that make a close, thick turf, and can be made important factors in the work of making home beautiful. Carpet grass is one of them; it is a native of the country and makes a low, tolerably close mat of green, but it does not grow even ly as a lawn grass should do, nor will endure uninjured even our light winters, so we do not very much approve of carpet grass. We want something better and more permanent around our houses, and we find it in Bermu da grass. Th|a is a flue, dark-green turfy grass that in yearly growing more and more in favor; the sole, objection to it, either as lawn or pasture grass, being its habitof stray ing out of bounds, aud this is a very small matter in comparison yftth its real value, as we shall hope to show our readers in due time. We heard ot Bermuda grass when wo first came to Florida, and there chanced to be a small patch of it on our land, where few roots, sent to the former owner from Kentucky,' bad been carelessly stuck down The patch was not a yard square and no more was to be bad. But we wanted grass, matter how little it might be. We felt lost without our plat of green to rest the eyes on when sitting on the porch, so two small plats of the sandy soil were leveled off and en closed by a border of strips, one on each side of the broad path leading down to the lake- let, and then the few roots of Bermuda were planted in spots about twenty inches apart. They looked very ridiculous at first, “little dried up wisps of straw,” somebody called them,with the bare sand dividing them from each other, it seemed hopeless to expect ever to see those desolate-looking plats covered with grass. But the " little dried up wisps” os soon os they recovered from their aston ishment at being moved, put up tiny green blades, and kept on trying to shake hands with their neighbors, until, it} less than a year, they succeeded in embracing each other, ami uniting into one beautiful broth erhood of emerald green turf. Another year, and so luxuriant was its growth, that the boundary strips were removed and leave given it to roam whither it would, so now, a fine large plat of deep green stretches out be fore the house where, only four years ago, was nothing bpt rough, weed-infested sand, hard to walk on, ofttimes painfully hot to the feet, and glaring to the eyes whenever the sun was shining. The horses rejoice to graze on it whenever permitted, the cows and calves eagerly munch the sweet hay it makes, when cut, as it has to be several times each summer when it has grown up to be eight or tfen inches high, children love to roll on it, and visjtors exclaim, while won- deringly rubbing their feet back and forth on the short, springy turfs "I’ve never seen anything like this in Florida.” But there is no reason why it should not be seen all over the State, wherever there is a house occupied by people who want to make a home in the land of their adoption. If the grass does run out among the trees it does, them no harm, if occasionally the ground around them is hoed, so as to loosen the soil. On the contrary, Bermuda grass, allowed to !run over poor soil, will enrich it by the old roots and grass blades dying and decaying. In the particular case we have referred to, the creeping propensities of the one time small plat ot green turf, are so far from be ing regarded with terror, that they are being encouraged, and a few years hence, from present appearances, from house to lakelet will be one beautiful lawn, refreshing to the eyes and a thing of joy forever to the horses or calves that may be tethered thereon There will be trees in its midst, orange, pear, peach, Japan plum, Japan persimmon; but we have no fears of their being injured by the grass, rather will their roots be shaded and the ground mode richer by the turf that will be hoed under around them. We used to be told that a lawn of grass was impossible in the piney woods of Florida but we laugh at that idea now. The Bermu da looks well all the year round, although during the months of December and January it stands still, and sometimes looks a little weary of well doing, it never dies down so entirely as to look dead and ugly; on poor soil it spreads slowly, on good ground, or with a top dressing of stable manure, ashes or bone meal, it growB rapidly and tall. It crowds out obnoxious weeds, and altogether lends so pleasant and homelike an air to one’s garden that we cannot too strongly urge the Florida settler to plant Bermuda, or or as it is really named after its introducer, a sea captain, Permudy grass, close to their houses. “Familiarity breeds contempt," and we are so accustomed to see grass around our expanse of desolate, weed-grown sand, what a great factor it is in our lives. Looking at the great oleander trees, with their stiff, dark-green leaves and bright pink flowers, growing so luxuriantly without care all the year round, “ out in the open,” it is hard to realize that this is the same plant' that'is so highly prized and so tenderly cared f<Jr in our Northern homes. There they are reared in boxes, and at the first approach of cold weather, hurried off into the warmer cellars, a specimen six feet high being're- garded as a great possession. Here, we see them everywhere, in every yard of any pretensions, towering to the height of thirty feet and loaded with blooms. Their growth is very rapid, in four years on poor soil a slip rooted in a bottle, will be come a wide spreading tree ten feet high. Delicate vines that will hardly grow at all in tiie chilly North, here flourish in the wildest luxuriance, and in our milder winters do not even die down to tlie roots, and when they do, set to work again in the spring just as if nothing had happened to them It is well known that the most beautiful roses are the most tender, and cannot be raised in the open air at the North, but here they ru^piot, and not only so, but many of the tea roses that are not supposed to be run ners at all, become regular run aways and clamber all over one’s porch or lattice work; the glorious, fragrant queen of flowers, peeping out here and there amidst a mass of tangled vines in such unexpected places, that vague ideas of a return of the days of miracles float about in one’s mind, until a close examination reveals the run-away rose branch hiding slyly amidst the dense foliage of another plant. In fact, the ways of the denizens of the vegetable world in Florida, are full of surprises to the ignorant Northern mind, and their ways eccentric to the last degree. Morning glories that grow so luxuriantly in the North become curious dwarfs here, miniature plants that trail for two or three feet on the ground and bear flowers propor tionate in size. Cypress viues, so tender and shy of growth in the North, in Florida run rampant, climbing to the tops of fences and lattice work, and then drooping downward like beautiful feathery cascades of scarletand green, or else rambles at will over the ground in wild beauty, running up to the tops of tail weeds, then down, and here, and there and everywhere. Tube roses, lilies and hyacinths, among bulbous roots do well, and there are beauti ful white lilies and pink lilies growing wild in the hammocks that flourish when trails planted to a flower bed. Tin .Jurna nox (good night,) is a remarkably rapid growing vine, with leaves shaped much like an ivy, set singly about three inches apart, on a slim, leathery, pliable stem, it is not only as we have said, so rapid a grower that it is some times called “railroad ivy,” but from the base of each leaf twoar three stems start out, each of which seems to vie with each other as to which can travel the fastest. The re sult is a fine, dense shade in an incredibly short space of time, if one only has the pati ence to keep pace with the long, down- reaching stems that hang helplessly down wards, waiting to be put up, like long hair that has no curl to it. The flower of the bona nox is as much of a curiosity as the vine itself. It is large and pure white, save for faint green bands that mark it off in several divisions. It is shaped like a shallow convolvulus, with its tips so decidedly pointed, as when open, to present a star-like appearance. It is a handsome, waxy, showy flower, but the most curious houses at the North, wherever there is room thing about it is, its manner of opening; it for it, that we do not realize until wo see an | don’t do it at all in the quiet, respectable way so fashionable in the world of flowers. It reminds one of those jerky, excitable peo ple who move through life on springs, who bounce and thump over every little uneven ness in their path,who cannot work quietly, nor open a door save with a jerk. This is just the way the bona nox behaves; from the seed to the flower it grows with one continu ous rush, as though running for a wager, and the flower—well, you see the long, white bud just as the sun has put his night-cap on and and gone to bed, it is about three inches in length, like a slender finger—you see it there among the thick, green leaves, lying perdu but the moment the bright luminary sinks tojrest, the bud awakes to a sense of its own impoliteness to the god of day, and lo I in an instant, while you draw a breath, the bud is gone and in its place a broad, white flower is nodding “ bona nox,” "good night.” It is like a transformation scene in a fairy tale, one moment a bud,the next,in the twinkling of an eye, the full blown flower. So quickly does itopen that even when waiting on pur pose to see it, one often fails, though some times a slight tremor is visible, as though a tiny elf were inside the bud, slyly casting loose its bonds. Opening at sunset the flower remains open until the sun rises again. This curious vine is at the beck and call of every one, for it is a native of the hammock and readily propagated from the seed or root. Another native vine, also a strong grower, and bearing a pink, convolvulus-shaped flower, and a pretty shield-like leaf, is the “eveningglory.” This, like the bona nox, opens ufter the sun has sunk low in the west, unless when the day proves to be that rare thing in-Florida, a thoroughly cloudy day, and then it remains open. The yellow jessamine is another favorite for home decoration, and abundant in the hammocks, its quick growth, once It gets started, its abundant, permanent foliage and fragrant yellow flowers, and above all its scornful disregard of frosty weather, which makes sad havoc of the bona nox and even- . ing glory, all combine to make it very de sirable to train over our porches and arbors K wherever needed. The clematis, coral honeysuckle, Virginia trumpet creeper and another trumpet creeper that seems to have no particular name, are also to be found in the hammocks, and all of these native vines seem not to mind their transfer to pine lands, but thrive and grow apace. The question of shade is of no small im portance in a land whero three-fourths of the year is summer, and where the sun shines nearly every day. Occasionally the new-comer is fortunate enough to find a few large oak trees growing on the site he has fixed on for bis house, and then if the latter is built to the northeast of these, and not very far away, their dense foliage will shield the southern and western rooms from the direct rays of the summer’s sun, a blessing not to be despised. As to the pine trees that may be on the building site, they must come down, every one of them, nay, we are wrong, a lightning rod is wanted, and these'tall pines make very effectiveones; there should be one leftstand ing on each side of the house, deadened of course, and so far away (but no farther,) that if some day they come toppling down before a lively breeze, they will not come “ Tap, tap, tapping at tbe door, . Splintering that and aometblns more." In planting shade trees, and this is one of the first things that should be done, no more beautiful and no more rapid growers can be found than the Texas umbrella tree and its kindred,but less symmetrical tree, the CAfno- berry. Their graceful, fern-like foliage, adds