Lucky horseshoe with every bunch

All during the local season, our asparagus came from the South Austin Farmers' Market. Now, we're finding it at H-E-B. I've always collected commercial ephemera, from nineteenth-century trade cards, to promotional post cards from all eras, to little tags and labels that catch my eye. This Mr. Lucky label took me to a Web site in Mexico. It appears that the asparagus grew or was packed for distribution in Colonia Fortaleza, Cortazar, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. The Web site doesn't mention asparagus, but does list broccoli, garlic, celery, and the generic "verduras" (vegetables). According to the label, one serving of asparagus is five spears. Not in this household.

Breton chocolate pound cake tracked down

I've posted before about Breton chocolate pound cake, made from the never-failing recipe that works even at altitudes over 7,000 feet and in a tube pan or a loaf pan, with or without the ornamentation of the chocolate glaze. Here's a link to the main entry, and a search of this blog will find other references. I've even put up a photo at Flickr showing one version. Cecily Brownstone, the AP syndicated food writer, touted the recipe and definitely attributed it to Family Circle (May 1976), reporting that it was reprinted in a Family Circle Cookbook published by Quadrangle (hardcover, 1974; Family Circle editors and Jean Anderson). (A collection of Brownstone's papers is at NYU.)

Despite the heat

The following are blooming, either in the ground or in pots, and attracting hummingbirds, honeybees, butterflies, and other visitors: ruellia, milkweed (asclepias), plumbago, lantana, Turk's cap, cosmos (pink family and yellow / orange family), and fennel. I don't think that geraniums attract anything, but we enjoy them, all the same. The same goes for rose of Sharon, morning glories, flowers of the spider plant, oleander, and black-eyed Susans, but I could be wrong about their attractiveness to the creatures. We continue to hear the giant cicada. It is very surprising to see new hyacinth-bean volunteers every day. The heat doesn't bother those seeds, apparently. We're expecting flowers from the hyacinth beans nearly any day now.

July 1982 books read

Anthony Burgess: The Long Day Wanes
Jane Austen: Mansfield Park
Elizabeth Gaskell: Wives and Daughters
Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love
Nancy Mitford: Love in a Cold Climate
Rose Macaulay: The Towers of Trebizond
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Charles Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop
Anthony Trollope: John Caldigate

The Mitfords and the Macaulay were read for the first time.

July 1981 books read

A. S. Byatt: The Game
Evelyn Waugh: A Little Order (ed. Donat Gallagher)
Margaret Drabble: The Ice Age
A. S. Byatt: The Virgin in the Garden
Susan Allen Toth: Blooming: A Smalltown Girlhood
Clive James: Unreliable Memories
Donald Hall: String Too Short to be Saved
Marge Piercy: The High Cost of Living

The Donald Hall may be the first book purchased fron David R. Godine. It has remained in print. Anyone to whom it has been given as a present always keeps it.

July 1980 books read

Anthony Trollope: Is He Popenjoy?
Barbara Pym: A Glass of Blessings
Barbara Pym: The Sweet Dove Died
V. S. Pritchett: London Perceived
Jean Stafford: The Catherine Wheel
Harriet Martineau: Society in America
Jean Stafford: Boston Adventure

Pym, Stafford, and the Martineau were all from the Austin library. I wonder how many of these remain on the shelves after all the growth of administrative personnel and deaccessioning of books. There are two Marteinaus still there: Deerbrook and letters to Fanny Wedgwood. I find that both Pyms are there. There's just one Stafford and it's not either of these.

July 1979 books read

George J. Becker: Shakespeare's Histories
Michael Grant: History of Rome
Mary Gordon: Final Payments
Charles Allen: Raj: A Scrapbook of British India
William Trevor: Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories
Adela Rogers St. John: Love, Laughter and Tears
Lynn Meisch: A Traveler's Guide to El Dorado and the Inca Empire
Paul Scott: The Day of The Scorpion
Paul Scott: The Towers of Silence
Paul Scott: A Division of the Spoils
Terence Conran: The Kitchen Book
Frank Swinnwerton: Arnold Bennett--A Last Word

Who now remembers Adela Rogers St. John?

Out there

The figs swell and remain on the branches, although all the leaves have yellowed and fallen. Leaves dropped last summer, too. For two weeks, hummingbirds have been seen at the Turk's caps and the pride of Barbados flowers. Lantana isn't doing much right now; new flowers are on the way and berries are all consumed. We see gulf fritillaries and unclouded sulfur butterflies. I found an empty monarch chrysalis on a potted milkweed plant. This morning, we watched two wrens try to take down a small moth caught inside the screen pavilion. They didn't succeed. We have puny cosmos, not much in the way of fennel flowers at the moment, and a few still-blooming (very few) bachelor buttons and delphiniums. Nasturtiums have dried up or, if they haven't, are not blooming. We were pleased to see a couple of rain lilies this morning; the rain must have brought them, since our twice-a-week sprinkling wouldn't be enough to do so. Circo Hermanos Vazquez has been in our dreams; if we could, we'd return for another performance, tonight's or tomorrow night's.

July 1978 books read

Geoffrey Tillotson: Mid-Victorian Studies
Gordon N. Ray: Thackeray: The Uses of Adversity
W. A. Craik: Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Provincial Novel
Winifred Gerin: Elizabeth Gaskell: A Biography
John Steegman: Consort of Taste 1830-1870
M. R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
Mark Girouard: Victorian Pubs
Mark Girouard: The Victorian Country House
Tobias Smollett: Sir Launcelot Greaves
Hal Borland: Country Editor's Boy

July 1977 books read

Charlton Ogburn: The Adventure of Birds
Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat
Kenneth Clark: Another Part of the Wood
Anthony Powell: Infants of the Spring

I wish that I'd made it a habit to record mysteries read.

July 1976 books read

Virginia Woolf: The Common Reader, First Series
Rebecca West: The Thinking Reed
R. W. Harris: A Short History of 18th Century England
J. H. Plumb : England in the Eighteenth Century
G. M. Trevelyan: English Social History
Sieg bried Sassoon: Memories of a Fox-Hunting Man
Madame D'Arblay, Diary and Letters of, volumber iv, 7/1788-7/1781
W. H. Davies: Autobiography of a Super-Tramp

Davies was published in 1907. Fanny Burney was in service to the queen as a lady-in-waiting, I think, during most of the time covered in this volume.

July 1975 books read

William Thackeray: A Shabby Genteel Story
William Thackeray: Adventures of Philip
Joseph Conrad: Under Western Eyes
Mollie Panter Downes: London War Notes
Charles Dickens: The Uncommercial Traveller
George Meredith: The Adventures of Harry Richmond
Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Diary from Dixie
Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Army Life in a Black Regiment
Booker T. Washington: Up from Slavery

I always think of Under Western Eyes, The Secret Agent, and Princess Casamassima as a trio.

July 1974 books read

William Thackeray: Henry Esmond
Anthony Trollope: Lady Anna
Anthony Trollope: The Three Clerks
Sir Arthur Bryant: Set in a Silver Sea

All these were re-reads. People have been writing a lot about that lately, ever since the Verlyn Klinkenborg piece.

July 1973 books read

Honore de Balzac: Pere Goriot
ed. Leon Edel: The Ghostly Tales of Henry James
Honore de Balzac: Cousin Bette
Henry James: The Golden Bowl
Arnold Bennett: The Old Wives' Tale
Jane Austin: Emma
Honore de Balzac: Memoirs of Two Young Married Women

If I find time, I may list the stories included by Edel in the James collection. I did enumerate them in the little journal of readings recently found.

Fabiola again

I wrote earlier about identifying a picture that was a familiar part of the environment when I was a kid. The collection of images of Saint Fabiola has been written about again recently, in the London Review of Books.

Persisting

Astonishingly, we still have bachelor buttons (cornflowers). Black-eyed Susans and nasturtiums are beginning to fade. Sweet peas are done. Morning glories like where they are and produce a flower or two of each of several varieties most days. Tomatoes became thick-skinned and are no longer blossoming or setting fruit, but the crop was large, of all varieties. Where they were watered, roses of Sharon are in profuse bloom; where they weren't, it appears that they may not survive. Where they haven't been watered and also spend hours in direct sun, Turk's cap is not flourishing. It's time to move the geraniums to shadier places. Pride of Barbados is now in full bloom, and some grown from seed thrown off by the only plant we ever bought are producing flowers for the first time. This morning we saw our first ruellia flower of the season. We're doing very well ourselves. Attendance at el cinco de mayo and Juneteenth served to acclimate us this year for our life without air-conditioning and so far the temperature inside the house has not gone above 80 degrees (apart from close to the stove when we're cooking).

Delayed arrivals and a surprise

At last there are flowers on the pride of Barbados plants and on the plumbago. Everyone else has had them for ages, it seems. But we have a flower that I haven't seen in other yards: celery! This is from the plant that sprang up in a pot that once contained basil from the South Congress farmers' market. This is year two for the celery and the first celery blossom that I've ever seen. The flowers are fairly inconspicuous, but the delicate white blooms are quite pretty.

Free and rare

We won't overlook the free movie showings at Regal Arbor again (the free children's shows are shown on the right of the page). Courtesy of some time to burn, we thoroughly enjoyed the children's show of City of Ember. The children were a very good audience, and the movie attracted a bigger audience than any movie of any kind that we've seen lately. This movie is not for children only; it's thoroughly enjoyable by adults. We couldn't understand why it was assigned a PG rating. Now, we want to find the book or books on which this movie was based. The acting is excellent and the production design is a real treat. This is a movie that insults no one's intelligence. And, thanks to the Austin Public Library, we happened upon Lorenzo de Zavala's account of his travels in the United States of the early 1830s as translated by retired TWU professor Wallace Woolsey and published by Austin's own Shoal Creek Publishers in 1980. It's my guess that this is a rare book now. It has apparently been reissued by Arte Publico. Parts of it make for fine reading aloud. Zavala was interested in everything and discusses at length the banks of the time and how they operated. This book belongs right up there with the accounts of Dickens (American Notes for General Circulation) and Mrs. Trollope (Domestic Manners of the Americans). Zavala visits some of the same locations (e.g., the Panopticon, Niagara). I love his description of West Point and its curriculum.

June 1982 books read

Barbara Pym: Jane and Prudence
Shelby Hearon: A Price of a Fellow
Shelby Hearon: Hannah's House
Kate Stimpson: Class Notes
Gillian Freeman: An Easter Egg Hunt
Hope Cooke: Time Changes
Edward Swift: Splendora
Elizabeth Hardwicke: Sleepless Nights
Paul Theroux: Girls at Play
Angus Wilson: Anglo Saxon Attitudes

This was an odd assortment! Shelby Hearon was read, of course, for the Austin connection. The others, apart from Barbara Pym (read on purpose) must have been serendipitous finds on the library shelves. I never owned a single one of these.

June 1981 books read

That must have been a June when I read lots of mysteries (I seldom recorded mysteries).

Samuel Hynes: Edwardian Occasions
Dika Newlin: Schoenberg Remembered
Murial Spark: The Girls of Slender Means

June 1980 books read

John Ardagh: A Tale of Five Cities: Life in Europe Today
Joseph Conrad: Almayer's Folly
Mark Girouard: Life in the English Country House
Harold Frederic: The Damnation of Theron Ware
ed. Michaels and Ricks: The State of the Language

June 1979 books read

Robert Tracy: Trollope's Later Novels
Ben Iden Payne: Life in a Wooden O
William Plomer: Electric Delights
Alison Lurie: Imaginary Friends
Roy Sherwood: The Court of Oliver Cromwell
Nina Auerback: Communities of Women
Kathleen Coburn: In Pursuit of Coleridge
Agnes de Mille: Where the Wings Grow
Ian Bradley: William Morris and his World
David Skilton: The English Novel: Defoe to the Victorians
Chrisopher Fry: Can You Find Me
Booth Mooneu: LBJ: An Irreverent Chronicle
Wright Morris: Earthy Delights, Unearthy Adornments: American Writers as Image-Makers
Mary Chamberlain: Fenwomen: Portrait of Women in an English Village
Alison Lurie: The Nowhere City
Christina Stead: The Little Hotel
May Sarton: Journal of a Solitude
Norah Lofts: Domestic Life in England
Giorgio Giacosa: Women of the Caesars: Their Lives and Portraits on Coins
Monica Dickens: An Open Book
Maureen Howard: Facts of Life
Paul Scott: The Jewel in the Crown

I still own the Paul Scott; everything else was from the shelves of the Austin Public Library and I wonder just how many remain there. I hope that at least Ben Iden Payne has been kept, if only for the Austin connection.

June 1978 books read

Anthony Powell: A Buyer's Market
Anthony Powell: The Acceptance World
George and Weedon Grossmith: Diary of a Nobody
Anthony Powell: At Lady Molly's
Anthony Powell: Casamova's Chinese Restaurant

All of these are still here on the bookshelves, Mr. Pooter and every part of A Dance to the Music of Time. Who could ever forget Pooter? Who could ever forget Widmerpool?

June 1977 books read

Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
Elizabeth Hardwick: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
ed. Donald Smalley: Anthony Trollope: The Critical Heritage
Elaine Showalter: A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing
Ellen Moers: Literary Women
A.O.J. Cockshut: Anthony Trollope: A Critical Study

June 1976 books read

Madame D'Arblay: Diary and Letters of, vol II (6/1781-8/1786)
Benjamin Disraeli: Vivian Grey
Virginia Woolf: Granite and Rainbow
Charles Dickens: Bleak House
Madame D'Arblay: Diary and Letters of, vol. III (8/1786-6/1788)

Dickens was a re-read. Madame D'Arblay, of course, is Fanny Burney that was. These diaries are on line in free text versions.

Flowering

Observed this morning are four kinds of morning glories; kazillion kinds of nasturtiums, in pots and not, trailing or climing and not; the last four poppies; the last, probably, of the sweet peas, of at least a half-dozen types; the last of the firewheels; the last of the violas (Johnny jump-ups); resurgence of lantanas (the birds are busy with the seeds and the flesh of the fruits); bachelor buttons (cornflowers); cosmos of two kinds (pink varieties and the orange and yellow ones); milkweeds of two kinds; zonal geraniums (pelargoniums); fennel; chiles; wild sunflowers; every type of rose of Sharon; two types of oleander; and very handsome black-eyed Susans.

June 1975 books read

Joseph Conrad: Nostromo
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations
Charles Dickens: Sketches by Boz (1st and 2nd series)

The Dickenses were re-reads.

June 1974 books read

These were both re-reads:

Anthony Trollope: The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope The Claverings

Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times wrote recently about turning to old book-friends ("Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader").

June 1973 books read

Marcel Proust: The Guermontes Way
Marcel Proust: Cities of the Plain
Marcel Proust: The Captive
Marcel Proust: The Sweet Cheat Gone
Marcel Proust: The Past Recaptured

American socks

Lately bags o' socks at outrageous prices are to be found in various retail outlets. I've noticed that the socks seem to come from China. I'm just now finishing the last socks from an assortment bought a long time ago somewhere in Austin. The label bears the cotton emblem and also a badge that says that the socks were made in the USA ("It matters!"). The socks were made in Alambama by Prewett Sock Mills ("Quality Since 1953"). On another part of the carboard insert, this is to be found: "An individual's pride is reflected in the products they produce. For over forty years our people's pride has resulted in uninterrupted sales increases. This produce is unconditionally guaranteed. If, for any reason, you are not completely satisfied with your Prewett socks we will replace them absolutely free. V. I. Prewett, Jr., Chairman Prewett Mills, Inc. For replacement, send laundered socks and original package to [the company]." These must have been good sucks, because there are still new socks in the package waiting to come into use, the ones already removed still being worn. The history of the company reports that, in October 2007, the founders having died, the company was acquired by an outfit called Gildan Activewear, Inc. I like the useful size chart that relates shoe size to sock size for men, women, and children. I haven't yet learned where Gildan manufactures socks, if it does. Gildan has its corporate headquarters in Montreal.

May 1982 books read

Fay Weldon: Watching Me, Watching You
Fay Weldon: The Fat Woman's Joke
John Lehmann: In My Own Time (The Whispering Gallery, I Am My Brother, The Ample Proposition)
Wilkie Collins: Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
Virgil Thomson: Virgil Thomson
L. M. Boston: The Children of Green Knowe
L. M. Boston: Treasure of Green Knowe>. M. Borson: A Stranger at Green Knowe
L. M. Boston: An Enemy at Green Knowe
L. M. Boston: The River at Green Knowe
L. M. Boston: The Stones of Green Knowe
Pamela Hansford Johnson: A Bonfire
Pamela Hansford Johnson: The Good Husband

All of these came from the library. It's very sad that there's now just one novel of Pamela Hansford Johnson in the entire system, all others apparently having been de-accessioned.

May 1981 books read

Barbara Pym: Less Than Angels
Peter Quennell: The Wanton Chase: An Autobiography from 1939
Fred Lape: A Farm and Village Boyhood
Barbara Pym: A Few Green Leaves
Frank Hamilton Cushing: Zuni
Graham Greene: Ways of Escape

New arrivals

This morning, there are big buds on both colors of oleander. These are the two that have survived thus far the blight that's been killing them all over town. We have pink cosmos joining the Bright Lights cosmos, and three more colors of sweet peas, one nearly a tomato red.

May 1980 books read

John Lehmann: Thrown to the Woolves: Leonard and Virginia Woolf and The Hogarth Press
Edward Seidensticker: This Country, Japan
Philip Larkin: Jill
Charles Osborn: W. H. Auden: The Life of a Poet
Isak Dinesen: Daguerreotypes and Other Essays
A. L. Rowse: A Cornish Childhood