Cornflower

Do you like chocolate?

     Well, it's a rare person who doesn't, but this is not a source of theobromine, it's Chocolate Cosmos, or cosmos atrosanguineus.

     And a bit of a non sequitur but still on the subject of gratification, would you like a book?
Then have a look here.

Slightly famous

   My name may not be in lights, but it is on the back cover of a lovely book!
More here, and a proper post about it coming up there later.

Pattern books

    

     The V&A are launching a new series of books on pattern, each with a CD of images from which you can redraw or rework the designs.
The first lot comprises:

William Morris

Indian Florals

Digital Pioneers

The Fifties 

and you can get the lot as a boxed set.

There's more on the pattern theme in the V&A Shop including this intriguing necklace!

Lost property

   A quick post inspired by yesterday's pictures of the rose whose vigorous habit and mature state threatens to hide other plants and even parts of the house.
    Hidden or lost gardens are a particular fascination of mine. I don't know where this started - an early reading of The Secret Garden, perhaps? Or was it a walk many years ago in the Perthshire garden pictured left when it was long abandoned and overgrown, the balustrade broken, the pool empty and the fountain dry?

If, like me, you are drawn to such places, then here are three books I can recommend which will feed your appetite for these forgotten pleasure grounds, some of them lost forever, others lost and found again.

Kathryn Bradley-Hole's Lost Gardens of England (from the archives of Country Life)
Jennifer Potter's Lost Gardens (which accompanied the Channel 4 series of that name a few years ago)
Tim Smit's The Lost Gardens of Heligan (Heligan website here - listen to the birdsong!)

  

    Every picture of these gardens in their heyday exudes a romanticism or suggests an idyll which masks the enormous amount of labour which went into their upkeep. Not only are the physical structures and the plantings no more, but the time in which they flourished and were photographed has gone too; we can't walk into that world -were we to try to re-create it - we can only glimpse its beauty as an outsider might look wistfully in through the garden gate.

Extremely cold comfort food

    When I gave a winter post the name Cold Comfort Food, I wasn't thinking of a dish to be eaten in extremis, but that's what today's similarly-titled post is about.
    If you've read yesterday's Cornflower Books piece you'll know I was quoting Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, and her interest in polar exploration literature. Well, later in the book while on the subject of food she mentions an extraordinary gastronomic survey:
"On Ernest Shackleton's 1914-1917 Antarctic expedition, Dr. James McIlroy conducted a poll of the twenty two men who were stranded on Elephant Island, asking each what he would choose if he were permitted a single dish. The sweet-cravers outnumbered the savoury-cravers by a large margin. A sampling:
Clark           Devonshire dumpling with cream
James          Syrup pudding
McIlroy       Marmalade pudding with Devonshire cream
Rickenson   Blackberry and apple tart with cream
Wild            Apple pudding and cream
Hussey        Porridge, sugar and cream
Green          Apple dumpling
Greenstreet  Christmas pudding
Kerr            Dough and syrup
Macklin       Scrambled eggs on toast
Bakewell     Baked pork and beans
Cheetham    Pork, apple sauce, potatoes and turnips"

Very interesting - specially the inclusion of turnips - and unsurprisingly, they mostly want highly calorific, sweetly starchy, homely fare, and would no doubt pass on the lemon sorbet.
But from the trivial to the serious, now I want to read about the expedition.

Lit. knit

    Dovegrey has been reading A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book and it has got her gathering shimmering fabrics and then quietly going to pot! I'm only a fifth of the way through the novel (it's nice and long) so who knows where it will all lead eventually, but that cover alone (you can see it in full here but click to enlarge) has made me pick up a skein of yarn which has been in my basket for a while, wind it into a ball and cast on.

Try as I might I can't capture the colours accurately, but they really are vivid. I'm using the silk/cashmere 4 ply to make a scarf for our red-head, and next her hair these blues and greens are beautiful.

 
  The problem is: do I read or do I knit? The book is compelling, and the simple pattern quick and pleasing. Decisions, decisions.

Cocooned ...

   

    "... a long comforting word full of encircling 'o's. The snow becomes soft then, a wrapping, a cushion, a downy casing between himself and the outside. In the candlelight, in the silence of the inner chamber, his lips mouth silently what he has written, finding comfort in the forms of words, in the facts stated, the process of stating them, using them to quell the fear."
From The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding. More on it here.

Struggling with the Bishop

    In Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson (more on it here), Colonel Weatherhead engages in annual "struggles with the Bishop". He refers, of course, to Bishop's Weed (bishop weed) or ground elder, a pernicious thing with which I've been struggling, too.
     This may be invasive and almost impossible to eradicate, but it's a lot prettier than the other objects of my struggles yesterday - a blocked waste pipe, overflowing washing machine and flooded kitchen floor were not in the least photogenic.

By the way ...

    I'm giving away a copy of one of my favourite novels of last year, and if you'd like a chance to win it then just enter the draw over here.

Dress in detail

  

      Reading my first ever Georgette Heyer - A Civil Contract - for our Book Group, I am delighted by and enormously interested in all the period detail. I keep on stopping to look things up and that of course leads me meandering on to discover other things.
Example: "Mrs. Quarley-Bix was wearing a low-bosomed gown of lilac sarsnet, with a train, and a quantity of ribbon-trimming. A turban was set on her head, kid gloves covered her arms, and as well as her reticule she carried a fan."
     But what is sarsnet? My OED gives "sarsenet" and "sarcenet" , deriving from the Old French drap sarrasinois or "Saracen cloth", and meaning "A very fine and soft silk material now used chiefly for linings".
     In trying to discover more, I reached this informative page about dress, and then I came upon this marvellous glossary of textiles - surely any other Heyer-fashion queries will be answered there.  And then I found this treasure-trove of antique and vintage costumes and textiles - feast your eyes!

More frills

    Writing about the sweet peas reminded me of a charming little book on the subject which I had tucked away and almost forgotten about.

     A Bunch Of Sweet Peas by Henry Donald tells of what happened in 1911 when Denholm Fraser, minister of the tiny Borders village of Sprouston, near Kelso, entered a sweet pea-growing competition run by a national newspaper.
    I won't give away any more of the 'plot' than that, but it's a prettily illustrated, delightful story, and all the nicer as it is a true one. What is staggering is the scale of the competition which Mr. Fraser went in for: 38,000 bunches of sweet peas were sent from all over the country for judging at London's Crystal Palace, the boxes unloaded from horse-drawn Royal Mail vans by 500 Boy Scouts "with Scout Masters to preserve discipline", all of whom were accommodated on the site in tents. Can you imagine the like of that happening today?
     The book would make a lovely gift - perhaps along with a real bunch of sweet peas or a packet or two of seeds (and if you're quick, it's not too late to sow them!) 

Hours of pleasure

   

     Katherine Swift's book about the creation of her Shropshire garden easily won its place on my 'top non-fiction books of the year' list last year. I wrote about it - and gave a flavour of it - here.     
     The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden is now out in paperback, and I was very pleased to see that Mary had read it and recommended it in our recent Buy a Friend a Book Draw.
 As Mary says, it's fascinating on so many levels, and it deserves a wide readership.

Spreading the word

If you want to read about an unputdownable book, have a look here!

Flower of chivalry

     Always keen to link my reading with other things, I just happened to have taken some pictures of iris when the flower cropped up - and clearly with a great deal of significance - in Nicola Upson's An Expert in Murder (and more on the book here).

     "The flowers which he had believed to be of a uniform deep lilac with a single splash of yellow were, in fact, a complex blend of tones and colours, each slightly different to the next. 'Did you know it's supposed to be the flower of chivalry?' she asked. 'Three petals - one for faith, one for wisdom, and one for valour.'"

Regardless of the flower's meaning, isn't its colour beautiful?

Buy a friend a book - 1

    It is Buy a Friend a Book week again, and this is the tenth time I've taken part, sending good books hither and yon to the winners of our draws. As I now have two websites, why not give away two books? The prize here on Cornflower is going to be a work of non-fiction, while over on Cornflower Books you can enter the contest to win a novel - and please take part in both if you'd like to.
    As usual, distance is no object so you are welcome to put your name in the hat no matter where in the world you are, and all you have to do to be in with a chance is leave a comment on this post giving the title and author of the last non-fiction book you read, and saying how highly you'd rate it. If you never 'read' non-fiction, mention a cookbook, knitting book or similar that you've used recently. The winning name will be drawn in a few days' time.
     Good luck!