CREAM HILL: Discoveries of a Weekend Countryman

by Lewis Gannett ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 1949

This opened a new door & me -- a peek into the past of our countryside, a realization that it is not only in manmade things that we are the melting pot of the world. For here- along our roadsides- are flowers and grasses, shrubs and trees, immigrants from all parts of the world. We can't look at nature and think- ""That's the way it looked when our forebears came"". Even the birds of those days were unlike the birds of today. Lewis Gannett gives one a sense of the march of nature across the face of the earth, ignoring man as often as not. These were some of his discoveries as a weekend countryman. And it is this that makes his book a wholly new kind of country book. It is not another book about a house in the country. For my choice, there isn't enough about the house -- the growing into a home for the Gannetts. It is a potpourri of Connecticut's countryside natural history, the flowers and trees and shrubs, the vegetables, the wild plants he grew- and the ones he couldn't grow. There's nature lore, too,- the tomato has a wholly new personality for me. The thrill of his fern garden is contagious. And the seasonal round of week-end country living was alluring for its likes and its unlikes to our own, not very many miles away. There are digressions- that leave the impression of a random notebook,- a brief section on rooftop city gardening, on American beards. There are bits of humor and philosophy, wisdom and enchantment. And the samples of Ruth Gannett's lithographs which will illustrate the book, suggest a delightful format.

Pub Date: May 13, 1949

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1949

Categories: NONFICTION