|
It
is a mistake to aim at the completion of a country home in a
season, or in two, or some half a dozen. Its attractiveness
lies, or should lie, in its prospective growth of charms. Your
city home - when once the architect, and plumber, and
upholsterer have done their work - is in a sense complete, and
the added charms must lie in the genial socialities and
hospitalities with which you can invest it; but with a country
home, the fields, the flowers, the paths, the hundred rural
embellishments, may be made to develop a constantly recurring
succession of attractive features. This year, a new thicket of
shrubbery, or a new gate-way on some foot-path; next year, the
investment of some out-lying ledge with floral wonders; the
season after may come the establishment of a meadow (by
judicious drainage) where some ugly marsh has offended the eye;
and the succeeding summer may show the redemption of the harsh
briary up-land that you have scourged into fertility and
greenness.
Donald
G. Mitchell, Rural Studies, 1867
|
