Category Archives: landscape

Mature Imagination and Youth

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Wisteria floribunda gently stirs…youthful fragrance…mature strength.

Imagine

late April

Northern hemisphere

Spring moisture

17 degrees centigrade

cloudless sky

mid morning

faint breeze…

…just enough to stir these sweet fragrances

and you will have no doubt…

as you gently and deeply inhale…

A mature spring is about.

Black Bird

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About this time of year, the early spring on the northern slope of the Swiss Alps in the Jungfrau Region–as the grasses first turn a full green, as the first wild primroses bloom, as the forsythia and magnolias bloom, the farmers bring out the sheep and cows–the bells and their random mystical ringing. At this same time a unique spring melody plays as the sparrows and the blackbirds greet the animals and the warmer sunny days.

If you try, you can almost add this photo plus the bird song to discover the briefest moment of fresh, sweet, spring air in the Swiss Alps.

Walkable Neighborhoods

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As The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling might have said: …a street in any town…

My two cents worth… What is at the heart of a comfortably walkable neighborhood?

1. Public ways that have human scale. Like the above.

Comment: Originally built before autos—but still able to accommodate wagons and animals. How can these be built today and meet your local and regional health and safety requirements? Maybe it is time to rethink health and safety requirements?

2. Social communities where people are truly respectful of neighbors. Like the above.

Comment: Where true respect exists, people do not worry about personal effects (see lower right above) being defaced or stolen. Or covered with graffiti and tags which often these days are the first signs of disrespectful neighbors.

Care for a walk?

Ephemeral?

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Frost…can there be anything more ephemeral than frost?

…ummm…our presence on earth?

🙂 Let me try again. The humour in this reality?

Once more…the pleasure as I observed the morning frost on that wood bench in the Schynige Platte Botanical Alpine Garden? Is that better? 🙂

Sweet pleasure. Ephemeral. Always sought. Always welcomed. Always missed.

And then I stood up, took a long, slow, deep breath, and turned around…I understood.

Humans + Landscape = ?

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In between my infrequent blog entries, which always focus on humans and landscape, I am writing adventure novels, not surprisingly on humans and landscape.

As you can see from the menu bar above, I have been working on four novels over the past six years.

In preparation for updating them on my blog this fall, I have had some fun doing themed graphic design, one composite image for each of the four novels.

Themed graphics?

Yes—unique to each novel—humans interacting with the exotic geography and inspirational landscape around them, with the lightest  sprinkling of ethnobotany.

I have interpreted each of the four novels below and I hope you find them enjoyable.

If so, recommend them to your like-minded friends, please.

This is the least developed adventure to date. The story revolves around a coffee house in Vienna–a place where for centuries East and West have and continue to struggle…over espresso…the text offering a brief respite.

The landscape background is the Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter where surface sand patterns take us to Julian eternities and the sun takes away our sight. The botanical panel is the date palm, Phoenix canariensis providing food, utensils, environmental and architectural shelter. The human craft panel is carved stone–essential discipline. The text is the gold ring.

The Moroccan landscape background threatens with an irritating red born of never-truly-healed and always festering cultural conflict wounds–North African, Arabian, Sub-Saharan African and European–in equal measures macerating humans over millennia. The botanical panel is the fruit and foliage of the fig, Ficus carica–rare relief. The human craft shows patterns from North African Berber wool carpets–practical essentials. The text is the shelter humans take from the native and endemic forms of the plant, Cannabis sativa. The dreams are real life.

The dark green and blue landscape background is the edge of our dreams always implanted by the highland mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and streams of the Swiss Alps. The botanical panel is the gentian, Gentiana acaulis, whose blue beauty, paired with our rare good fortune, beckons human transformation. The human craft panel patterns are the lace of internal order. The text is the promise of clarity–or is it simply the hope of clarity?

Facials?

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…or too much time…

I’ve got too much time on my hands—it’s the only way I can explain this stretched metaphor where the skin on one’s face and plant cover on the earth are equated.

If plants are the skin, the face of the earth, then…

The sky, the earth, the clouds and water combine to give the most unique of deep and revitalizing facial treatments to the plants.

And afterwards…all are glowing…absolutely glorious…everyone is smiling!

Happy?

🙂