Author Archives: eflaherty

Myths…and…fairy tales…

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Amanita muscaria pushing up from the forest floor.

Amanita muscaria pushing up from the forest floor.

On the northern hemisphere forest floors, this is the season to discover and examine mushrooms and toadstools.

Mushrooms are edible fungal growths taking the form of domed cap on a stalk, while toadstools are similar but traditionally poisonous.  This world of the forest floor is a dangerous place for casual and naive human visitors.  Beware.

Amanita muscaria from underneath…now where is that dwarf?

Amanita muscaria from underneath…now where is that dwarf?

With its bright red, white-spotted cap the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) has delighted people since time immemorial.  It is inedible (with a psychoactive asterisk, a risk) and yet considered one of the most attractive and most familiar species of fungi–a subject of many myths and fairy tales–valued also as a good luck charm.

Its white-spotted, red cap covers the head of a dwarf who carries out all sorts of mysterious activities in the forest.

Correct me if I am wrong but anyone who has silently walked through a rich, multi-layered forest knows that there are movements that strangely occur…movements on the edge or just beyond the capacity of our senses.  Algernon Blackwood’s short stories examine those areas.

I’ll say no more.  But I would appreciate the comments from readers who themselves have experienced, in the forest, that which cannot be explained.

Lessons from Plant Life

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Health…Beauty…

Health…Beauty…

Every year over the past four years, this local school has had these window boxes bursting with geranium lierre, ivy geranium. This village school was built 100 years ago and includes primary and middle school students.

These joyful flowers mark the school as the prideful focal point of the village center–signs of good health, beauty, good maintenance–everything the students and the parents would want out of a school.

Why don’t all schools look this joyful and welcoming?

Maintenance…Timeliness

Maintenance…Timeliness

LandArt2014 Gletscherschlucht

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French LandArt2014 Entry captures from where our roots come and to where our roots go…

French LandArt2014 Entry captures from where our roots come and to where our roots go…

 

On my way to the Gletscherschlucht, between the Eiger and the Shreckhorn, I found in the forest the existing remnants of Grindelwald’s LandArt 2014.

LandArt2014 asks the artists to find their raw materials in the adjacent forest itself.  Then the art goes through the transitional cycles of time and decomposition.  Some of the 14 entries had already merged with the forest.  Others were still visible.  I liked the one above by a team from France.

Pascal Imhof has produced an HD Virtual Reality of the French entry–and from this link you can see VRs of all LandArt2014 entries.

These are the people responsible for the French LandArt 2014 Entry.

These are the people responsible for the French LandArt 2014 Entry.

The Promise?

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…in the spring…evergreen or deciduous?

…in the spring…evergreen or deciduous?

How often have you hoped a promise would be fulfilled?

And, just what are all those connotations surrounding the word–promise–all the aura–all the magic?

Today as I looked at the above image, in real life, I was convinced that the promise of spring had been fulfilled–entrancingly fulfilled.

I looked and looked–the greens dark, the greens alive–then I remembered the questions about plants and design–evergreen or deciduous?

Lawns or Meadows…

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Mini-meadow in the lawn--heart pounding variety--spring promise in early April.

Mini-meadow in the lawn–heart pounding variety–spring promise in early April.

Or, both and…

All my life I have seen cool weather grasses from Chicago to Detroit to Boston to the UK to Belgium; but I have never seen like I see in these photos– the Thun and Brienz lakes area of Switzerland.

Everyone’s house has a very small yard which usually includes a vegetable garden, fruit tree or two, flower garden and a flat trimmed lawn area.

In the spring the usually flat trimmed lawn area reveals this just opening array of wild flowers–kind of mini-meadow like.

People cut around these bouquets of wild flowers until the flowering is finished, then the lawns are fully cut.

Next year the wild flowers return.  Both lawns and meadows, as I see it.

Anybody seen something similar?

Joy of Spring 01

Cool season grass, early April in northern hemisphere following a steadily mild winter.

…the promise of sexual pleasure?

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Looking into a red heart…

This morning a red hibiscus distracted me from Yellow Dreams writing.

No, no, no…first it is beauty–something drunk in only by the eyes.  Then it is filtered and processed by the mind, by each person’s mind, each person’s experiences…

…enter stage right…the promise of sexual pleasure.  Then intelligence says depth of field is not the best, so re-shoot the photos.  Then, intelligence asks which hibiscus, species, variety?

Then the curves, the light, the reds, the veins…

Then sustainability–what?  Sustainability–now, it has become a charade.  Has the beauty been nullified?

What I like about these perceptions of flowers is the broad breadth of interpretation–the seemingly endless options of perception through which anyone can easily drift, easily navigate.  That amazes me!

Keeps me returning to the plants, to the gardens, to the landscapes.

Landscapes…people…the Way of St James

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It is the mystery we all face…understanding…the landscape we all walk through…the strange bifurcation…spirit…material…search…discovery…and search again…and again…not sure…still looking…tired…still looking.

St James, the first disciple of Jesus to be martyred…somehow his body ended in Northern Spain…a landscape with a history of people that defies, that predates everything we know…the land influenced by people whose roots are mysterious–Basques, Berbers…

Why do people travel this landscape, the way of St James…the Camino de Santiago…the landscape of hope, of discovery?

Yeah sure, to tick a box…but the others…the others…the video below by an Irish Pilgrim captures the others, captures an essence of the search for discovery.  It captures the thrill of hope in the journey through the landscape and it captures the melancholy sadness of arrival at the destination and still finding a mystery yet to solve.

That is our life.

And that is why I write landscape stories.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOMMl33Ot5Q?rel=0&w=640&h=360]