Strawberry bed

“ When a new bed is to be formed, the strongest runners should be selected from the old plants; and they may be planted in beds containing three rows each, eighteen inches apart, the plants being about twelve inches apart in the line. Alpine strawberries may be raised from seed, and will fruit the first year. The Pine is an excellent strawberry for flavour, but Keen's seedling is the best for general use. The Hautbois requires a great deal of manure, and, as the male and female flowers are on different plants, nearly one half the plants in a bed are unproductive. ”

“ Heavy materials of silk and woollen were used, as well as cotton stuffs. Men paid great attention to the colourings of their bed furniture, as we have seen in several inventories, and Horace Walpole chose for his own bed at Strawberry Hill purple cloth lined with white satin, and bunches of feathers on the tester. Hepplewhite spent much pains on the details of his beds, and recommended that the valance be made very full, in which case it was called the "petticoat valance." ”

“ If, however, a new bed can be made somewhere else, the plants will thrive better upon it. Unless there are serious objections, a change of ground is always advantageous; for no matter how lavishly the plot is enriched, the strawberry appears to exhaust certain required constituents in the soil. Continued vigor is better maintained by wood-ashes perhaps than by any other fertilizer, after the soil is once deepened and enriched, and it may be regarded as one of the very best tonics for the strawberry plant. ”

“ A bed consists of two blankets spread on the ground, and all the personal property not otherwise appropriated piled on top. A luxury, mind you, is this; later it was much more simple, consisting of earth for a mattress and the sky for a counterpane.
The sun is not up when in comes the horse herd. My strawberry roan goes sneaking about in the frosty willows, and after sundry well-studied manœuvres I get a grip on the lariat, and am lugged and jerked over the brush until “52 on the nigh front foot” consents to stand still. I saddle up, but have lost my gun. ”

“ Thomas Bond, Esq., of East Looe, in Cornwall, describes his mode of cultivating strawberries. He does not adopt the common practice of cutting off the runners, but they are confined to the bed by being turned back among the plants from which they spring. In the autumn, the beds are covered to the depth of two inches with fresh earth, through which the strawberry plants shoot in the spring with great vigour. ”

“ You must often put the mattress on a sheet on the floor, and look all along the edge and in the corners and under the ties. The spring must be painted with turpentine, especially in the hidden places, and so must the corners of the bed. It is a good plan to use only metal beds with iron spring frames, for bugs like wood much better; they seldom stay where there is none. If you ever find a bug, or the tiny black speck it makes, get the white of an egg and beat it with a teaspoonful of quicksilver, and paint everything with it, and you will have no more trouble. ”

“ I perceived that I was upon a low couch of elegant construction—without curtains—but in their stead a mosquito-netting spread its gauzy meshes above and around me. The snow-white colour and fineness of the linen, the silken gloss of the counterpane, and the soft yielding mattress beneath, imparted to me the knowledge that I lay upon a luxurious bed. ”

“ Three-quarters of the floor space was taken up by the heavy four-posted bedstead, built of black walnut and hickory and almost as hard and as heavy as iron. The bed was corded with rawhide, on which rested a mattress of straw and a long pillow filled with chicken feathers. ”

“ If a good deep bed is given, they will lie down and rest themselves, whereas, if there is not enough, and the floor feels hard through it, they will walk about over it, and far more will be wasted than if the horse was lying down on it. The bedding should be taken up every morning, and any soiled straw removed. It should be well shaken up and spread out in the sun to dry and air, and at night, when again put down for use, a small quantity of fresh straw added to it. In wet weather the bedding can be aired and dried in the verandah. ”

“ There were no windows, two great doors, one on each side of the corner, admitting light and air, and at one side of the room a smaller door led into another apartment, for this was a house on an unusual scale.
The native bed is something unique, and perhaps a description of it will not come amiss. A plain, high, single wooden bedstead, such as we sometimes see in very old-fashioned farm-houses, first has ropes or strips of skin drawn over it, upon which is placed a piece of matting, or in some cases, leather—the latter a sign of luxury. ”

“ I felt at the sides, and discovered that what had appeared to me, from beneath, to be the ordinary light canopy of a four-post bed was in reality a thick, broad mattress, the substance of which was concealed by the valance and its fringe. I looked up, and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. ”

“ There is a nice, old-fashioned, round-fronted chest-of-drawers with brass handles in the room, but the most striking detail of its equipment is a stumpy and amazingly abrupt bedstead against the wall, which is just big enough for a big doll. The bedclothes of this eerie little cot are thrown back, and in the centre of the rumpled mattress, in the hollow made by my heroine's recumbent form, curled up in a sublime indifference to the puffing and blowing of its mistress on the hearth, lies a shabby, emaciated, and disgusting cat. ”

“ The next step in building the mattress is even more simple and expeditious. A basket of long bobbins of roughly spun cotton was near the grandmother and probably her handiwork. The father took from the wall a slender bamboo rod like a fish-pole, six feet long, and selecting one of the spools, threaded the strand through an eye in the small end. With the pole and spool in one hand and the free end of the thread, passing through the eye, in the other, the father reached the thread across the mattress to the boy who hooked his finger over it, carrying it to one edge of the bed of cotton. ”

“ In the daytime an ample quilt thrown over the bedding will be quite drapery enough, and at night it is just as well to have a current of air beneath the frame of the bed. The new spring mattresses are very nearly perfect as regards the elasticity which is so necessary in a couch, and they can be suited to all tastes by having either soft or hard horsehair or finely picked wool mattresses on the top of them. ”

“ They are wooden four-posters, these native beds, with a cotton roof, usually red, set off by a frill of lace all round the top, above the mosquito curtains. Some of the bedsteads I have seen, made of native woods, are very prettily carved round the pillars, and a really handsome piece of carving fills the space at each end to the height of two feet or so. All right so far as looks go, but the bed itself is an appalling instrument of torture to lie on, for in pattern and material it is the same as the seats of cane chairs, and as hard as iron—all for coolness. ”

“ Half a yard of plush, which costs two shillings, will make a pair of flower-pot covers.
From America comes to us a novelty in bedroom decoration, and one very suitable as a present to a young lady who uses her bedroom as a sitting-room and likes it prettily decorated. This is known as a “pillow sham,” and is a long strip of linen or cambric ornamented with lace and ribbons, and laid over the top part of the bed in the daytime only. It fits the width of the bed whatever size that is, and does not fall down the sides. ”

“ When new beds are covered with cases, the moth will sometimes eat through without its being discovered. Covers also prevent the air from sweetening the feathers, and when new they should never be covered unless in use. When beds are slept on, it is best to have a thick cotton sheet, or if it is cold weather, a blanket between the under sheet and the bed, and have them washed and aired occasionally. ”

“ How these six-foot men can sleep in any comfort in five-foot beds is a mystery. The mattress is a well stuffed feather bed, the coverlet is of eider down. The down is stuffed into a tick like a pillow and like a pillow it has a white case. One virtually sleeps between two feather beds. In the nightly struggles to kick the foot board out of my short bed, the overgrown pillow, used as a blanket, often fell to the floor and sometimes as a last resort to straighten out, I followed the coverlet to the floor, used it for a mattress and with a steamer rug slept in peace. ”

“ I know what these occasional visitors beheld, because it, too, I have seen with my own eyes: seen the two balayeurs staggering downstairs with a bed (consisting of a high iron frame, a huge mattress of delicious thickness, spotless sheets, warm blankets, and a sort of quilt neatly folded over all) ; seen this bed placed by the panting sweepers in the thoroughly cleaned and otherwise immaculate cabinot at the foot of the stairs and opposite the kitchen, the well-scrubbed door being left wide open. ”

“ It won’t be so easy to do after dark.”
“Beds,” echoed the girls, staring up at her. It was honestly the first time they had realized the need for beds.
“That’s what I said,” returned Betty, whimsically. “They may only consist of a couple of100 blankets apiece but we can call ’em what we like.”
“What’s in a name?” murmured Grace, adding wistfully: “Oh, my comfy home and my still more comfy bed.”
“Stop it,” commanded Mollie. “You know very well, home was never like this. What if we do have to sleep with nothing but blankets between us and the cold, cold ground for one night? ”

“ It is best to lay the foundation of good-sized branches, cover them with smaller ones, and over all place a deep layer of fir twigs broken off the length of your hand and laid shingle-fashion, commencing at the foot of your bed, or the doorway of your shack or tent, each succeeding row of boughs covering the thick ends of the previous row. A properly made bough bed is as comfortable as a mattress, but one in which the ends of the sticks prod your ribs all night is not a couch that tends to make a comfortable night's rest. ”

“ In spite of the fact that the little white bed is always associated with the child's room in story and song, to say nothing of the popular imagination, there are various kinds of brass and wooden beds made in small sizes that are thoroughly in keeping with one's idea of a typical nursery. The white enamel beds, which may be had as plain or as elaborate as one desires, are always dainty, and have the advantage of harmonizing perfectly with furniture and hangings of almost every description. ”

“ While it makes the rooms cooler, it cannot, by any possibility, interfere with the occupations of those who do nothing. The bed affords a curious contrast to the rest of the furniture. While the apartments exhibit a deal-table, badly made chairs, probably a Dutch clock, and an old looking-glass, the bed "challenges admiration by snowy white sheets, fringed with lace, a pile of soft pillows, covered with the finest linen or the richest satin, and a well-arranged drapery of costly and tasteful curtains." ”

“ It is a good plan also to have check covers for matresses and feather beds, but the covers should not be kept on beds that are not in use, lest they should be liable to moth. In winter a blanket should be put next a bed that is not often slept in, or for a delicate person, and be particularly careful, that sheets are dry before they are put away. ”

“ There is a look of retirement about the beds, which stand in dim recesses of the inner apartment, with their old but well-cared-for chintz hangings, differing from the free uncurtained openness of the blue nose settler's couch; a publicity of sleeping arrangements being common all over America, and much disliked by persons from the old countries, a bed being a prominent piece of furniture in the sitting and keeping rooms of even those aristocratic personages, the first settlers. ”

“ But, oh, the softness of that bed when I hopped into it; the soothing pliancy of it as I rolled over between those crested sheets! It seemed to take me in its arms and hold me there, the way that a man who really cares for a woman tries to hold her. It seemed to billow up all about me, like lazy waves that were floating me off to warm-scented islands where all the fat little Cupids could rock in the palm-tops and the two-legged goats could do lazy minuets to the drone of their own flutes. ”

“ Next follows bedmaking, at which the cook or kitchen-maid, where one is kept, usually assists; but, before beginning, velvet chairs, or other things injured by dust, should be removed to another room. In bedmaking, the fancy of its occupant should be consulted; some like beds sloping from the top towards the feet, swelling slightly in the middle; others, perfectly flat: a good housemaid will accommodate each bed to the taste of the sleeper, taking care to shake, beat, and turn it well in the process. Some persons prefer sleeping on the mattress ”

“ The bed may be of straw, even, and still, if full, fresh, and well-made, be every way sufficient for comfort and health,—better, indeed, than a poor or long-used mattress of any sort;—a mattress of hair, cotton, or wool makes a complete bed. A feather bed is the worst of all. Whatever the bed may be, it should remain open and airing whenever the patient is out of it for any length of time; hence the bed-room should not be the sitting-room when avoidable. ”