Scherenschnitt and Winter

Winter tree model for paper-cutting, scherenschnitt

Decades in the Arabian Peninsula on the Tropic of Cancer and winter cold becomes welcome.

Ice: winter cold

CJ spent so much time on the Tropic of Cancer in Arabia that he desired the cold of winter; but as a youth in Tangier Gardens, he didn’t know that was in store for him.

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Landscape Libretto

Promises not kept.

Every year in the Christmas season, I refresh with Nutcracker Suite—the more traditional librettos of Tchaikovsky’s great work. It takes me on a ride, a light and joyful ride.

That ride on the dancing, story and music is special. Music can by itself take us on a ride. And so can the landscape. 

The greatest national parks in the US and around the world can take us on a ride. I’ll leave the definition of ’taking a ride’ to the readers. Clue: it has nothing to do with mechanical vehicles.

I’ve always felt that the landscape and garden work of landscape architects should be able to take the user on a ride. Like music, like dance, like poetry. Romantic poets, centuries ago, took that ride in nature. Why can’t the work of today’s landscape architects offer that ride to users? Am I dreaming?

Dreams by the author of Tangier Gardens, buy the book @ Smashwords: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma

Ayisha Qandisha and other djinns

An American university student, majoring in landscape architecture, has one more design class to complete for graduation—a term abroad and he has chosen Morocco.

Using the beautifully tiled, colored and patterned public water fountains in the medinas, he plans to count people—a simple ‘turn-up-every-day-and-count’ metric exercise.

Captivating

He thought it would be simple; but it wasn’t.

Ayisha Qandisha and other djinns from North Africa and West Africa are determined to get a piece of the Western fresh meat.

The whole story is in Tangier Gardens.

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MATRYOSHKA

Like to Solve Puzzles?

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…journeys of adventure and discovery, or…

MATRYOSHKA—the Russian nesting dolls for CJ

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The first doll is the landscape architecture doll. On that doll’s dress can be found painted in delightful detail three stories. That doll contains three stories about the lives and careers of landscape architects. One is about a student, soon to graduate in landscape architecture from university, whose uncertainty endangers his career. The second is about a mid career achiever so eager to succeed that he chances his life. And the last is about a senior professional who just can’t retire.

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Inside that landscape architecture doll is a second doll, an American expatriate doll upon which is painted a pattern at once attractively easy to enter and also difficult to exit. That pattern highlights the interactive threads of each story wherein people, struggling at the sharp edge where multi-cultural theory meets cross-cultural reality, come face to face with the resulting electricity causing unexpected results.

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Inside that expatriate doll is an ethnobotanical doll painted with characters who, in all three stories, explore the hazy edges of people and plant relationships where stories and tales give way to esoterica. 

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And inside the ethnobotanical doll is the last and most detailed adventure doll painted with the brightest naive colors with a loudness that hides the hearts of each of the three stories including coming of age in North Africa; dealing with death in Saudi Arabia: and, building gardens with pirates and white collar mercenaries in the Empty Quarter.

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It all begins with a walk in Tangier Gardens, an eBook.

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Arcane? Or just a normal day?

A hopeless student chanced upon a hidden garden. In that garden he discovered a process… an arcane process, some might call it simply maintenance, through which plants in real life, become portals–organs of transmutation where the material becomes the celestial. Thus began his life quest.

Take a walk in Tangier Gardens.

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Morocco–where the Berbers, Africa, Arabia and Europe collide.

Too Hot?

Northern Hemiisphere hot summer weather got you down?

Tired of the pros an cons of ‘climate change’?

Take a break. Take a walk in Tangier Gardens–refreshing!

EXCELLENT VALUE! On sale now-75% off.

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Take a walk–enjoy the garden. CJ did.

 Who is CJ? A landscape architect whose attraction to plants drives his design to the arcane side of ethnobotany. Get the ebook today.