Three years ago my husband – then boyfriend – and I bought a small blue cottage in Sullivan County, New York. This had been a dream of mine for years, and when Mark and I met, it became a joint dream. Our Manhattan home is a one bedroom fifth floor walk-up in the northern reaches of Manhattan. It overlooks Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters. Our neighborhood and the view is rather bucolic for Manhattan, if you ignore the periodic car alarms, blaring music from passing cars, and the occasional late night drunken fight on our corner.

View from my apartment window of the local wildlife

But it’s city life and we are a quick zip down to midtown and downtown on the A train. I love living in New York, but I also longed for a country getaway where I could grow a garden, read on a hammock and have dinner in a screened-in porch to the hum of cicadas and crickets. When we found our little blue cottage we found our perfect country retreat, with a screened-in porch, space for a garden and surrounded by trees.

The view from my hammock sans wildlife – they are in their hideout plotting the next raid on the garden.

In August of 2010, Mark and I got married in the backyard of our little blue cottage. Now we divide our time between the whirl of our city life and the slow pace of our country home. Whether I’m looking out my window at pigeons nesting in my downstairs neighbor’s window boxes or at an owl resting in on the branches of a tree, I’ve always got projects that I’m working on inspired by both of my homes and surroundings.