A Writer's Garden
 Ethel Pochocki
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Forest of Peace Publishing, Inc.
  ISBN: 0939516616


Illustrated by Peter LaGue. A garden is where metaphor flourishes, parables abound & fairy stories thrive.

Ethel Pochocki considers the garden a schoolroom, a courtroom, a sanctuary of healing, & a stage upon which the drama of life is played out, filled with ethical dilemmas where we try to do no harm, accept defeat with grace, & triumph with modesty.

From the gardens of my parents' homes to the acres at boarding schools, to the evergreen enshrubbed moats around museums where we London schoolgirls were allowed to daintily frolic after lunch, to the pots of geraniums & avocado plants I tended on my tenement window sill, to the hardscrabble derelict lot where a house had burnt down to the kitchen gardens of the communes to the rental houses & finally, to my own little acre out here in the forest, it has taken me decades to come to "the garden" with any maturity, skill & philosophy.

If you have enjoyed any of my Thoughts, you will relish Ethel Pochocki's charming musings inspired by her New England garden. She imbues each flower, each bug, each season with enchanting lives, stories & humor.

A Writer's Garden is laid out in tidy beds called Volunteers, November Daffodils and Good Friday Peas; Outwits and Strategems; Useless Beauty; Celestial Design; Lessons from the Berry Patch; Fringe Benefits; The Perfect Bouquet & The Garden in Winter. Naturally, like all things in a garden, her essays sprawl over bedframes, & peep around pages.

It is hard to thin out the stories I love the most -- Ethel Pochoki's whimsical fairy stories fascinated me -- Mrs. Yap-n-Snap, Elderberry Jelly (my friend Wanda has just brought me a jar of this!), Five in a Pod, & The Fruitcake.

Every page is infused with allegory, metaphor, poignancy & peril. Thinning Corn brings back the same ethical worry I have felt each year, as I too "play God."

A word about Peter LaGue's illustrations -- exquisite! Gorgeous, ebullient, entrancing.

I beg of you, should you have a writer in your life who dabbles with dirt, blossoms & veggies -- consider giving her A Writer's Garden -- she will shower you with zucchinis, flowers & blessings!

Purely & simply -- Ethel Pochocki's writing is divinely inspired, delightfully entertaining & entirely memorable.

More from Ethel Pochocki The Mistletoe Girl and other Christmas Stories; The Wind Harp and Other Angel Tales; The Attic Mice; A Penny for a Hundred; The Gazebo

www.forestofpeace.com -- Suppliers for the Spiritual Pilgrim
(11/03/02)

Rebecca