Vera Jane Cook's Blog, page 3

Chatter Creek Cottage: Witches

Actually I mean ‘bitches’ but for the sake of my blog I’ll be as polite as possible and refer to the last bitch in my life as a witch. Same thing. Well, it’s been beautiful up here in the Catskill Mountains, the colors have been crisp and bright, often a muted cacophony of deep reds […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: The Arts & Craft Movement

I am totally inspired to create my next novel sitting at this beautiful new edition to our living room – our Arts & Crafts Mission desk. Above the desk is a painting by Chandler, which you’ve seen before but I’d say the painting has found its home.. There is something so absolutely, intriguing about Chandler’s […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Endings

I still think of September as the beginning of the year, the falling leaves and the burnt colors, like an opening curtain on the first Act. Everything behind me never stays in the shadows; my bristling past is like a rubber ball, just bouncing into view but not real enough to slow me down, not […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Shadows

There are so many shadows in my life, empty spaces like whispers you don’t quite understand. Shadows are like puzzles we mean to solve. That shadow is the limb of that tree and that shadow is the leg of the table but that shadow knows no form other than its own. Could it be the […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Loss

It was a beautiful birch tree, smooth, tall white limbs. I loved how it bent over us curved and swaying like a vulnerable musical note, a long sinewy stroke on a violin. She’s gone now, lying in the creek on her side waiting to become firewood or the legs of a table. I don’t deal […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Hibisus

Surrounded by colors of lavender and yellow eating fried chicken and coleslaw from the Fosterdale Café and drinking white wine from New Zealand. It’s moments after a heavy rain and the air smells like licorice candy. My chihuahua is snoring in my lap and the butterflies flirt with me as they flutter and land on […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Fog

      It’s a moody day at Chatter Creek Cottage. I love mood. Fog creates such compelling chiaroscuro in my memory, old fine prints of recollection like black and white films in which footsteps are heard beyond the shadows and your heart skips a million beats. Recollections like small town streets at dusk, empty […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Pig

So Pig has a home for now in the back garden. He’s been in storage for years and I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed him. I found him in Andes, a small town in upstate New York and not far from our first house. I think this pig has the most incredible face […]

Chatter Creek Cottage: Marianna’s Zinneas

        Marianna Young created this beautiful bed of Zinnias and she’s damn proud of it. This is where the guests are paraded by, the first thing to be shown off and the must do before anything else when we return from the city: CHECK THE ZINNIAS Our friend Brock has been put […]

Chatter Cottage: Lemonade Days

I’ve always loved a front porch, especially those big wrap around white porches. Chatter Creek has a small front porch, but plenty room for two rockers and lots of flowers. The deck is in the back on the creek and when the sun hits the front porch too hard, the deck is cool. When the […]