Ellen Herrick

Author of The Sparrow Sisters

Everything’s Coming Up Roses, Fingers’ Crossed

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The forsythia is blooming so it’s time to prune the roses and plant some new ones. Of course, the forsythia starting blooming just as a whole wad of snow fell so I’m not entirely confident I can use this old gardener’s rule this year. Never mind, I’m hauling out the compost, the loppers, the shovels and the bonemeal and hoping for the best!

Have I mentioned that my English friend Fiona insists that one must prune one’s roses as if they are your worst enemy’s? Your worst enemy’s roses or your worst enemies themselves? I’m never quite sure so I just whack away scattering thorny stems and curled leaves–and not a little blood–all over the garden. Then, for respite and reassurance that I am not just a destroyer of worlds, I clean out the dahlia bed. I hope to plant all the tubers–35 of them last count–by the weekend. We have established that I don’t winter over my dahlias and every year when I dig out a perfectly healthy, firm, mandrake-like tuber I feel just awful. But then I hit a ooey gooey clump and I keep digging and tossing.

I ripped out all the weeds and bits and bobs from the vegetable garden last week. I am starting from seed this year and already I am sure that nothing will come up. If there were ever a metaphor for my gardening style this would be it. I run headlong and heedless through the veg patch adding compost, poking seeds far to close together, throwing the radishes in with the carrots and arugula, messily hacking away at the oregano which has taken over far too much real estate. I plant too many tomatoes cheek by jowl and then I have to thin them out mercilessly. I end up with such a jumble of nameless green that I lose perspective and run out to buy a bunch of starter plants. By mid-July it’s become a teeny tiny Jurassic Park  without Dr. Ian Malcolm’s science of the obvious: “Life finds a way” .

I seem to have over-planted

 

 

 

Right, back to the new roses. David Austin Roses has been my go-to source for years. Currently in their fifth or sixth season standing up to groundhogs, frost, snow and dog poop are The Ancient Mariner, Lady of Shalott, Boscobel, Gertrude Jekyll, Gentle Hermione and Sweet Juliet. I choose most of the flowers I plant by scent. Happily theses roses are

Still Life with Landline

as beautiful as they are fragrant and they flower repeatedly making them perfect for cutting. Now they are joined by another Boscobel (the scent is redolent of pear and myrrh), Wollerton Old Hall , Harlow Carr, Abraham Darby and Lady Emma Hamilton. That’s the plan at any rate. The new kids are currently huddled in their bare root state in a cool corner of the basement. They are going in this weekend right after I wrestle the rampant mint and aggressive shasta daisy out of the ground.

David and his light sabre attack dahlia bed

Yes, Virginia, there will be dahlias

Sweet Peas, Please


If you could see my gardens now you might think I have awfully lofty goals, but I have faith. Faith is really the only thing that keeps gardeners going, isn’t it? Faith in our ability, our soil and our plants to return each year and remind us that we are only stewards, helpmates at best. It is a small miracle each year when  thorny canes leaf out, the red, feathery-tipped peony spears push through or the nearly transparent green of sweet pea stems unfurl and twine their way through the fence. But, oh how that small miracle restores a gardener’s faith once again.

 

Hello Dahlia!

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Dahlias, darling

I am a gardener. I am self-taught, I am impatient, I am headstrong (I don’t winter over my dahlias after the “dreadful, moldy, dead tuber alien pods of 2012” episode). I am also blowsy, floppy, scented, undisciplined…and I like right angles. All of this to say that I am both my mother’s gardener and my father’s. My father planted the same thing each year in Zen-like rows along a Hockney-blue swimming pool: disciplined, clean, orderly—pleasing in the spareness. My mother planted too many zinnias, dahlias, cosmos and Shasta daisies so that just beyond Dad’s meditative garden, colorful cheery chaos exploded. I’ve already confessed to inheriting my mother’s nocturnal, neighborly pruning habit in The Constant Gardener. I’ve shared the story of my father’s outsized joy at the cherry tomatoes, spotty beans and wonky, pasty peaches he harvested one summer before the deer and birds got to them: “The crops are in,” he crowed holding three tomatoes and a basil leaf. I’ve made it clear that, tempted as I am, I will not use a pesticide in my garden in Not So Silent Spring… I will, however spray soapy water all over those damn earwigs. Now, with spring upon me, it is time for my dreamy plans to take shape in the salty, windy, chilly reality of my Cape Cod garden.

 

Here’s what will happen (it’s already happening…): I will start getting seed and plant catalogs. I will begin stockpiling them as if I was a survivalist and the catalogs were canned goods. I will knock over the squirreled away catalog tower next to my bed several times in the middle of the night on my way to pee. I will fold down so many corners you’d swear I was an origami-ist. Then I will plant my usual seeds and seedlings, in the places I always plant those seeds and seedlings. Why, you ask? Why be so hide-bound and unadventurous. I guess it’s because I am, in fact, pretty set in my ways. It’s kind of like that song from The Fantastiks; “Plant a carrot, get a carrot not a Brussels sprout…” Or in my case, plant a sweet pea get a sweet pea not a marigold—those are always planted around the tomatoes and basil. The carrots are next to the radishes, which march along nicely next to the arugula. The peonies and shrub roses (I’ve just ordered seven new highly-scented English roses—one is called Shropshire Lad!) play together hugging the old barn and the climbing roses and clematis scale the shingled wall behind the raised dahlia bed. Oh! Those! Dahlias!

 

Dahlias are my kryptonite. I am helpless before their steamy little bags of tubers and dirt promising giant blossoms in eye-popping pinks, purples, peaches and reds. I’m not much for the white or yellow ones, but if pressed…step away from the display, Ellen. I have never met a dinner plate dahlia I didn’t at least tolerate. There they are, flowers as big as a child’s-head, calling to me from the—misleading–photographs on the packaging. There they are, Otto’s Thrill so deeply pink it could be an exploding star, and Cafe au Lait, creamy, peachy, delicious and impossible in it’s perfectly spiraling petals. I’ll just grab one bag, or maybe two I tell myself as I start to pile them into my arms until I give up and grab an empty basket and fill it.

 

This is spring, then. The ever hopeful, overenthusiastic practice of putting bits and bobs into the ground and expecting the miracle of growth. And this is creating, isn’t it? Come with me while I stretch this metaphor to the breaking point. So, we look through our colorful catalogs. In my case for both The Sparrow Sisters and the new book, The Forbidden Garden I began with an idea of a story and then I began to think through the flowers and herbs I knew. In my case the ones my mother and father planted years ago and the ones I have nurturing for the last ten. Once you know what you know, you realize how very little you know at all! So library, magazines, gardening sites down the cheeriest of Internet rabbit holes and finally, books on the history of medicinal plants, Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and a few just a little wack-a-doo websites about witches and fairies, ghosts and myths. Such fun I had!

 

Only after I’ve chosen seeds and prepared the soil can I set loose the gardeners who will tend them. Sorrel and Nettie and Patience Sparrow, all smudged with dirt, armed with trowels and twine, clippers and cuttings, mortars and pestles. And set them loose I do. I start every writing day with “Once Upon a Time” because those words draw me into the story as if it is a fairy tale waiting to be told. So, there go the Sisters and here comes the town, the Wiltshire countryside, the boys who love the girls and the darkness that must come right along with the light. There will be failures in the writing, the telling and the story but, just like in my garden I am afraid that I am a bit headstrong and simply rip out the weeds and the duds and plant something else.

 

It is spring, or nearly so and I am ready. Come along, then, let me tell you a story…

 

 

I Have No Elf on a Shelf

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My children are grown now so we missed the Elf on a Shelf extravaganza. And, no I am not sorry. Not that we didn’t have our own, certainly less KGB, elf tradition. It began with my father. But really, it began with his five sisters and three brothers on a tobacco farm in 1930s North Carolina. There wasn’t a lot of money in this big family but there was a lot of love. The older children looked out for the younger right down to making sure the magic and mystery of Christmas, elves and all, was never forgotten. They are all gone now; my father was the last. But, they left me with a lasting love of the season and an unshakeable belief in the power of family love.

My sister and I lived on the seventh floor in an elegant building on Central Park West. There was a wood-burning fireplace in the living room and a long foyer covered in big black and white checkerboard tiles. We could roller skate out our apartment door, onto the elevator, through the grand building entrance and right into the park. This is not a real estate ad, just a little background. Both of my parents grew up in rural North Carolina; my mother went to college, my father did not. They came to New York in 1951 to be actors. My mother became a teacher, my father became an executive. We, their urban kids, became their audience.

Growing up in New York City in the sixties and seventies was a study in contrasts. I suppose it still is. Then the only reason you ventured onto Columbus Avenue was to go to the Sloan’s Supermarket, the drycleaners or to make your way, quickly, to Broadway and the World o’ Nuts shop for fruit leather. Then during the Christmas season I spent every evening–and afternoons on Wednesday and Saturday–in the State Theatre dancing (flailing, honestly) in The Nutcracker. No, really, I never could figure out why Mr. Balanchine picked me out of the back row every damn time. At any rate, this was my job for a lot of years. I would take the number ten bus down Central Park West to Lincoln Center clutching a book and a bag of tights, slippers and makeup. My hair was tricked out in ringlets and sprayed hard as rock candy but I had to depend on the kindness of one of the other dancers to paint me up at the theatre because my mother was of the opinion that you never wore stage makeup on the street. “Only an amateur would do that, darling,” she advised me.

Most evenings after the ballet I’d take the number ten back, much of my makeup smeared off with this sort of gelid cream that sat in stained pots all along the dressing room tables. But every now and then my father would meet me at the stage door and we’d walk home. Some nights it snowed and the street lamps were haloed with white light, the park blanketed and the taxis shushing down Central Park West like sleds. We sang Christmas carols as we walked until my father decided that either Broadway classics or the great American songbook standards would be more motivating in the cold.

One year a performance fell on the same evening as a grand party my parents were giving at the apartment. We walked home and into a golden whirl of people in their festive best, glasses sparkling, Noel Coward singing in the background (on the record player, that is) and my mother in the most marvelous black and white checked taffeta skirt that matched our foyer. Everyone applauded when I came in as if I were a prima ballerina instead of a skinny kid. Mom whisked me through the foyer and into her dressing room where she wiped off the rest of the makeup and slipped me into my Christmas finery. She was an excellent seamstress and made all our clothes when my sister and I were little. This time my outfit was a deep blue velvet suit; shorts, jacket, ruffled shirt and white tights, patent Mary Janes. I looked like an idiot. I was infuriated. Well, that’s neither here nor there; it’s just a Christmas memory that popped up. Stay with me, I’ll bring this home, promise.

Back to our elf tradition courtesy of the North Carolina family. It began the week before Christmas. We’d be sitting around doing not terribly much when suddenly my father would freeze facing the window.

“Did you see that?” he’d whisper.

“What?” I was already shivering in anticipation; it had begun.

“An elf, I just saw an elf! He was right there!” My father would point out the window. “Oh, another one!”

It never occurred to me to wonder how an elf got to the seventh floor just as it never occurred to me to question how Santa came down our chimney in a sixteen-story apartment building without shooting off into someone else’s hearth. Nope, I just squealed and hid behind my father while I searched for a glimpse of this creature somehow hovering over the Upper West Side.

Years later, my three children would be welcomed into the wonder by my Dad. We lived in London, which made the idea of elves scrambling along the rooftops of Notting Hill utterly believable to us all, because Peter Pan, right? Dad was just as good at the game as he was when I was little and my kids were just as thrilled as they looked and looked out the tall windows, the old glass wavy with age. It was magic every single year.

Well, then here’s my point. Today, in Cambridge in our little jewelbox house, I have no Elf on a Shelf, nor do I have Dad (or Mom) anymore but I do have this tradition. In the days ahead I will have all three children home and no doubt, at some moment when I am sure everyone is distracted I will say, “Hush, look! Did you see that? An elf!” and they will turn to the window together and laugh.

 

Please don’t fire me; this is my first novel.

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Don’t be fooled by that smile

I gave the world’s worst reading from The Sparrow Sisters the other night. And I gave that reading at my local independent bookstore, the shop I frequent, the place I wander unmolested, filling my arms with books I don’t need but simply must have. This store is important to me. The reading, it was important to me, too. I am the first person to admit that I don’t properly prepare for readings mostly because I still can’t take myself seriously enough to practice. It just makes me feel as if I’m wearing my mother’s high heels and someone is about to catch me playing dress up. I’ve done pretty well at these occasions up till now, I think. But this last one? Absolute rubbish. Here’s the thing, I have read this passage at every event and am generally please with the choice. That night, as I went along, it seemed too long and I became overly aware of every shift and shuffle in the gathering. So, I started skipping a paragraph here, a sentence there. I could hear myself reading faster and faster, I could hear my voice tremble, and I–painfully–heard myself as the audience must have, stumbling around in a complete bog of discombobulation.

I was as surprised as anyone that my performance was so thoroughly amateur. Just before it began I had been talking to the other two authors joining me at the event. Lynne Griffin is one of my teachers at the writing center where I have studied. Lenore Myka is the author of a short story collection so compelling and beautifully written that I recently shoved it into the hands of a friend shrieking “READ IT NOW!” Anyway, I was sharing an amusing anecdote about hearing Anne Beattie and Raymond Carver read way back in the eighties. My mother and I were incandescent with anticipation and Ms. Beattie did not disappoint. She read in a voice that totally matched the one in our heads when we read her stories at home. Mr. Carver, on the other hand, opened his mouth and out came a slightly strangled Cary Grant impersonation. We started giggling and had to hide our faces for the rest of the evening.

Oh, the hubris!

There I was, my voice thinning, fading, the words tumbling out in no particular order. Even as I read, or more precisely mumbled, I began to plan how I would snatch success from the jaws of failure by being particularly appealing during the Q&A part of the program. This I did. I mean, there was laughter and nodding heads and I made my points pretty clear so I managed to climb out of my slough of despond before people came up to have a book signed. I even acknowledged that it hadn’t been my finest hour in the performing department. And then there was this guy. He asked if he could have a word after I signed. A perfectly respectable fellow so, sure. I stepped aside and shook his hand. His name receded into nothingness as soon as he said it, of course. At any rate he was intent on telling me something.

“You are a terrible reader,” he said.
I said, “I know, that was really sucky.”
“No, that was the worst reading, ever!”
“Gee,” I said.
“Seriously, you need to do something about that because as soon as you started talking and answering questions you were terrific but I totally dismissed you when you were reading.”
“Well, thanks?” I said.
“I understand that you are new to the game and maybe even a bit disbelieving that you’re even in the game,” he said.
“That’s true,” I said. “I really find it hard to accept that I’ve been published.”
“Well, get over it!” he said. “You owe it to your readers and potential readers to pay attention to this part of your job, too. It’s disrespectful, really.”

He was right. My lack of preparation made for a lack of confidence, which made for a lack of, well, value, in fact. (Yes, I see all those commas.) I did not give good value because, in what is a most selfish way, I continue to behave as if I am a dabbler, a dilettante, a hobbyist, an amateur, indeed. Here’s the lesson. I am not an amateur. I did not write a first novel in my ‘mature’ era because I had a few free years on my hands. I didn’t screw up the courage to take a writing class and share my work for the very first time ever because, what the hell and why not. I didn’t approach an agent because I thought she had nothing better to do with her time than read a piece of poor writing, or have that agent ask editors to read because they, too were just sitting around staring into space. No, I did this thing, this amazing, hard, terrifying thing because I actually know what I am doing. And as it turns out, I’m good at it.

Let this be an apology to the very kind group that came to hear me read from The Sparrow Sisters, to the bookstore that hosted me, and to the gentleman who put his finger on exactly what went so wrong at that reading. I am sorry that I didn’t give the same measure of worth to this part of my new job (in a room full of dedicated readers) that I give to my work when I’m in a room alone with the words. I promise I won’t do it again.

You must be wondering why I asked you all here…

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As you may have noticed my old blog, All Stories Are True, has migrated over here to my shiny new website. Those of you who have followed me in the past know that I disappeared for awhile there. My last blog post was on the death of my father and then…nothing. Part of what I called ‘the big blank’ is because my family was digesting the huge change that came with Dandy’s passing. Part of it was because our family itself was changing: adjusting to life back in America, graduating college kids, new high school daughter, new puppy, new house. My husband commuted to London for over two years and every Herrick, big and small was a little upside down and inside out. Finally, I was writing The Sparrow Sisters, or at least trying to.

Writing a novel was not something I ever planned to do so naturally it, and I, were a bit of a mess. Well, now the novel is done and it will be out September 1st and, unnervingly, I am working on a second project. So, I am back in the writing and blogging saddle and I hope you will all join me for the ride!

Once Upon a Time

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TheSparrowSisters-cvr-2Long, long ago in a United Kingdom far away a thirteen-year-old girl (a thoroughly unpleasant age for all involved) prepared for a weeklong skiing holiday in Austria (as you do). She asked her mother, who was staying behind in London (already giddy with the prospect of solitude and books, books, books), “What will you DO while we’re away?”

“Why, I’ll be suspended here awaiting your return, of course,” her mother replied. Because, really, isn’t that what they all thought? To her daughter she was either a complete numpty or utterly indispensible but as in most things, the truth lay somewhere in between.

“No, Mum,” the girl said, “What would you do if you could do anything at all?” What indeed?

“I’d write a novel,” the mother said, surprising herself entirely more than her daughter.

“Great, can I read it when I get back?” the daughter asked and bopped out the door.

That novel was a failure in every way. Oh, it had elements that were fine and some good writing, very good, even. But mostly it was silly and amateurish. Still, it was a thing.

Slow forward and that little girl is 18 and that mother (me) is somehow still younger than springtime and we are living in Cambridge, Massachusetts and no one is zipping off on European jaunts or nipping down to Portobello Road for some fruit and veg. There is, however, another novel, a better one, I think. One day I ginned up the courage to enroll in a local writing course to bring it into the light. I am a recovering publishing executive. I know how ugly this business is, how cruel and unforgiving the blue/red/pencil/track changes, Michiko Kakutani can be. It took a lot of self-talk and wine to push the ‘sign up’ button one night.

In the fall of 2013 I had never shown anyone The Sparrow Sisters, never let anyone read even a sentence, never read it aloud to myself. I sat down in a Novel 101 class on that very first day and was certain that my head would blow off and leave a stain on the ceiling. Instead I found a circle of bright, interested writers who were gentle and careful in their critique and fearless as they shared their work. And so over the weeks and months, I was transformed into a fearless, gentle, caring and careful writer. I learned craft and structure, process and revision. I was taught that throwing things out could be as creative as writing things in. Less is more, more is more, more is less, and rules are rules are meant to be broken only after you’ve learned the rules. Right, my point (which by now is so dull as to be a crayon) is this: I became a student again because I needed teachers and the company of other students. In becoming a student I became a professional. And now, The Sparrow Sisters takes flight at last.