Just gotta do it!
Relieve summer boredom.
Hide from climate change.😉
FREE ebook, Tangier Gardens 11,12,13,14,15 August
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Kool summer vibes
Category Archives: gardens
6 days til FREE Tangier Gardens
Tangier Gardens ebook on Amazon will be FREE 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 August.
Get it and tell me about the fragrant flowers and cooling gardens.
Health, good health
Everybody wants it; but can health, good health be seen?
I’m not talking about humans.
This is about plants. And it is not a discussion about the definition of beauty or the definition of good health.
It is rather about what our eyes can observe. See a beautiful plant. See a beautiful flower. We are accustomed to those.
But something happened to me the other day on a walk. Our local weather has been good: sunshine, warmth and deep gentle rains. Locally, one finds in many home gardens well maintained topsoil–mulched with animal manures and dug in every year.
What does that mean? Healthy plant growth. And even with very common plants, their health shines. It captured my attention recently. My photo shows that. I hope you can see it.
Unusual perceptions of plants and their flowers? That is what CJ experienced for the first time in my book, Tangier Gardens. If you like plants and their flowers you will like CJ’s story.
As it has for millennia–the rose
As it has for millennia…the fragrant rose…exudes a mellow sweetness that quietly and slowly penetrates the deepest corners of the heart and surreptitiously intoxicates…soothes all emotions.
Get close to a fragrant rose today. It is a free pleasure. Let that fragrance enter your being.
When CJ was in Morocco, it was not scent so much as the sights and sounds of the plants that entered his being and took him to places never talked about at university.
Just Published again? Yup–but there’s more
New fresh spring green blades of grass and then common primroses. We are past the beginning of spring into the warm Easter colors of spring.
Let me see–how many years have I been alive?
Has there ever been a year without a glorious spring?
Of course not.
Spring inspires me to write about that existential wonder we all share. Spring is medicine that soothes the political and media attempts to agitate us all.
I just go outside and take a walk.
The best of my spring inspirations has been my first book, Tangier Gardens.
In Tangier Gardens, I explore the curative effects that plants provide to ease human existential anxieties.
The Tangier Gardens eBook is FREE today for one day only.
Spring Joy–it has begun
Every spring is a joy! So let’s cheer the warmer sunny days, fresh spring greens, dancing flowers, sweet scents–everyone of those entrancing joys.
Celebrate the first day of spring with an additional joyful special–a FREE OFFER.
For five days only around the first day of spring, I offer for FREE my debut eBook novel, Tangier Gardens. On the mesmerizing Mediterranean coast, the story revels in the discoveries of Med landscapes, gardens and plants.
On March 19, 20, 21, 22, 23–pick up a FREE copy here on Amazon.
The story?
…coming of age…
FUN READING
for students and
aficionados of landscape architecture, the Med and Morocco.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In this bildungsroman, Christopher Janus, his friends call him CJ, needs a break. He has been busting his hump full time six years at university with one more class till graduation.
CJ’s studying landscape architecture, into pedestrian towns and warm sandy beaches. For his last class, a term abroad design study, he’s on his way to Tangier, a town coincidently with sandy beaches on the Med and a historical pedestrian district, the medina.
In Tangier Gardens, the author draws upon his years of extensive experiences in the Middle East and North Africa to weave a fascinating tale of intrigue.
Just released, this fast moving novel is on a ‘Spring Joy Special’, the eBook is regularly $3.99 but to celebrate the coming of spring 19-23 March, I offer it for FREE.
Tangier–where are the gardens?
CJ was coming of age and he was lost. He had wanted to get absorbed in a different culture. The labyrinth had captured him. In his despair he turned to his oldest friend, a girl with whom he had been growing for the past six years. And she became his strength. Though separated from CJ by thousands of miles, she lit his path to clarity.
Tangier Gardens. Launching March 2022. Notification of details and discounts here.
Urban Green…600 years ago?
If you Google Tangier Gardens you will find books filled with fine photos of gentrified medina homes in Marrakech, Fes, Tangier, Rabat…
CJ’s head was spinning. His term abroad study landed him in Tangier. The cross-cultural stuff came at him fast and furious. He was on a landscape journey–without end.
CJ was born in the USA but Tangier was not the USA. Back home the suburbs were all green, every house had front and backyard gardens and downtowns, every street was lined with trees and city parks were aplenty. Frederick Law Olmsted’s legacy was as far as the eye could see. But that was home.
Tangier, the medina, the kasba a town for centuries and CJ could not find one tree or even one plant.
Here is what he found–nothing–classic hardscape-only urban realm–not even a weed pushing through paving cracks. Green AWOL. But population density as high as NY City. CJ wondered is it a muslim thing–from the Koran, the Hadith–or just local Cherifs? It was another of the cultural mysteries he encountered. They kept coming like address cards in a full rollodex.
But he did learn some history of public water delivery. And CJ did learn that the urban green was hidden in the private courtyards of every riad in the medina. He found a ’smart urban green’, a small urban green, a manageable urban green, protected, quiet, hidden from public noise, hidden from public view.
But if you are really into Tangier Gardens, the book will be launched in early 2022, sign up today–> here for details and discounts.
CJ needs help, where can he find it?
PLANT PORTALS
Who is CJ?
He is the protagonist in the series, The Landscape Architect.
The Landscape Architect is the title of a series of fictional autobiographies. These are CJ’s autobiographies. In this series, CJ reveals the twists and turns in the development of his career as a professional landscape architect via his interactions with cultures, landscapes, gardens and plants of the world—where the unexpected and downright strange become daily facts of life.
Tangier Gardens is the debut novel in that series.
When you dig into Tangier Gardens, you will find a contemporary coming of age action novel about CJ (Christopher Janus), who like us is facing a broad range of distressing challenges.
CJ needs a break. He has been busting his hump full time six years at university with one more class till graduation.
He wanted just a few moments of repose before getting on with his career.
Didn’t happen. We all sadly know that story. But how did CJ deal with it? Tangier Gardens is that story.
CJ, studying landscape architecture, is into pedestrian towns and warm sandy beaches. For his last class, a term abroad design study, he’s on his way to Tangier, a town with sandy beaches on the Med and a historical pedestrian district, the medina.
However, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and landing in Tangier immediately upsets his planned easy observe-and-check-the-box design study. He is thrown off balance and he has to start all over from scratch–no more easy study.
With Andalusian legacies, languorous gardens, Moroccan markets and ancient medinas, Tangier Gardens brings Mediterranean life to the armchair traveler.
If you are:
-A nature lover, into urban gardening or a landscape architecture aficionado;
-Curious about all things green–the environment, plants, gardens, landscape;
-Intrigued about the North African multi-cultural, mystical history of people and plants, then
–Tangier Gardens IS A MUST.
Chocolate Gardens
…for millennia…Tangier has been a nexus of Mediterranean, African and European cultures…a classic melting pot that is still on the boil.
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 am about to share with you goes beyond strange.
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.
A short while ago, I prepared to record the revised draft of one of my novels to perform a sentence by sentence development edit. To my surprise, as I set up a folder for the audio, I found an old 30minute .aif file entitled Chocolate Gardens.
The Chocolate Gardens tells the story of a Tangier, Morocco garden, as recorded by Christopher (CJ) two decades ago. In order to visit the garden he was required by the garden’s owners, a Brit and a Ruskie, to undergo a special ordeal of chocolate and absinthe before walking at sunset in the garden. CJ first had to visit the land of the green fairies before he could enter their Oval Garden. This is that story.
I have attached a link to a 30 min. SoundCloud file that tells that story from the early days, back when I was developing the beta version. I am moving this story forward as Tangier Gardens–out of the classroom into real life…via plant portals. Click on the SoundCloud link immediately below and listen to Christopher tell his story. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/235419640″ params=”color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
…but the deeper Christopher (CJ) digs into Tangier, the stranger it becomes. He can’t tell one portal from another. Entangled almost beyond hope, he walks the Oval Garden at the Hibiscus House. His way out…his way home?
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 well illustrated with Art Nouveau graphics. There you can read Christopher’s Tangier garden story–his journey in search of portals.