Where to find it?
Today I was lucky.
I discovered hope in a simple home made courtyard.
When looking for hope…it can always be found…don’t give up…expand your search…change the scale of observation…works for me. Primula vulgaris and flagstone paving.
…dream or old school or sustainable?
From the forest to the town.
In the town.
Duplex?
Neighbors in the duplex make the shared balconies their own. Note finishing details–they are rough but they stand the test of time. Century? Two centuries? Older?
Not everyone keeps them in museum quality. It is expensive; and believe it or not, it is not in compliance with current energy standards. And how much to upgrade in order to meet those standards?
…garden and its even stranger keepers…in Tangier.
The Story
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Click the orange circle above to listen. This story is 30 minutes about Moroccan landscape, a strange garden, absinthe, chocolate and its plants.
Date palms and mimosa in Morocco (Phoenix dactylifera and Acacia dealbata). Ever wonder about the magic of fragrance? Try mimosa, in its natural habitat, in the winter.
The Background
Anyone who has worked in a garden–suffered blisters and callouses in a garden for fruit, vegetables, flowers, medicine–knows there is something more in those gardens. This is for you.
Gardens? Chocolate? Yes, definitely…but I never thought to combine them until the email I received quite recently from an almost forgotten friend. Donkeys’ years ago when I was in Tangier, we worked together on the Baie de Tanger–it was a tourist destination development project.
Now, my friend’s still in Tangier, but as an antique dealer, using as an income cover, a store of second hand furniture. This story is a found antique.
In ‘Christopher and the Hibiscus House’, Christopher tells the story of a Tangier, Morocco garden. In order to visit the garden he was required by the garden’s keepers, a Brit and a Ruskie, to undergo a special ordeal of chocolate and absinthe before walking at sunset in the garden. Christopher first had to visit the land of the green fairies before he could enter their Oval Garden. This is that story.
Readers…by now you know that my blog, flahertylandscape, is all about plants and people–landscape journeys. Sounds fair and safe enough; but what I share with you in the above story goes beyond ethnobotany, beyond strange.
The Moroccan dream.
…for millennia…Tangier has been a nexus of Mediterranean, African and European cultures…a classic melting pot that is still on the boil.
This is in part a freshly edited re-post of a 2015 post I made, entitled Chocolate, Gardens and Magic, which, if I might say so, was a too long read; but it is fortunately well illustrated with Art Nouveau graphics.
Most of the time I take photos of plants, gardens or landscapes where I attempt to share something beyond sense perception. That is my fun.
The other day, not far away, I found this sign. Tomorrow is when? Tomorrow never comes. Now isn’t that the funny truth?
And after all, it is not a stretch to say beer is the ideal people and plants linkage. Ethnobotany at its finest.
See you there tomorrow for free beer.
It happened last night.
Woke up this morning and winter had snuck in. Winter! And I had not yet even finished the requisite autumnal post.
Snow down to 3,000 meters. Above image shows in the foreground two valleys at 600 meters. The valleys drain the north side of the Jungfrau Massif, part of the Berner Oberland in the Swiss Alps. If you magnify, you can see Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger in the left center background.
Late summer, afternoon sun…what more can I say?
If at first you don’t succeed…
Go in a little deeper.
Railing about what?
Once upon a time…and then it was yesterday…and you are reading this today.
In a land of mountain trains–funiculars, cable cars and narrow gauge cogwheel trains. They are slow and they get you high.
Why? Why get high?
I’ll let the following photos tell the story. You will be in the Bernese Highlands of the Jungfrau Region, the northern pre-mountains, above 2,000 meters in the Swiss Alps. Why build these mechanical contraptions to get high?
Here are the trains that get you high.
Passenger cars–note narrow gauge and cogwheel. Start at 600 meters, finish at 2,300 meters.
Passenger cars and engine–small and strong–electric power.
Engine close up–attached in front of the engine is a cart for transporting goods and construction materials.
Once you are high…the air is thin, fresh, cool and the distances…magical.
Mountains–Eiger, Monch, Junfrau with the Mannlichen gipfel amidst the clouds in the foreground.
Paths to explore, paths for discovering.
Discoveries.
Going deep in.
Can’t get enough.
…or, poppy?
…demanded I take this photo! 600pixels wide does not do justice to what my eyes and ears met that day.
I just can’t wander too far from Gnome. Are they following me?
The black cat is cool with all of it.
I am looking at a bosque of Plane trees planted next to the Interlaken Ost train station. In the recent afternoon sun, I could call them butterscotch or toffee and be happy.
Often, in the urban public realm, simpler is better.
Platanus acerifolia?
