Category Archives: landscape

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?

🙂

Petal Mirror

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Petal Mirror–is the universe in that petal mirror? Are those stars?
And if those are stars…what is the reverse mirror?

Mirrors, look into yourself? Or, mirrors, look into the clear night sky?

I was looking into this African violet petal mirror and saw everything about the night sky that I could not understand…and…everything about myself I could not understand.

Before I collapsed from dizziness, I asked how can a plant do this?

…and today, I’m happy just to enjoy this flower’s beauty. Really, I’m just fine. 🙂

Implied Basics

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In this photo is the loop of life. All the basics are there or implied. Tree yields wood for shelter. Tree implies arable soil and vegetation upon which all life subsists. Snow is the provision of water. That is all. The fuzzy bit is the uncertainty that all get automatically at the time of birth. But even with uncertainty the entire picture can indeed have balance, even though asymmetrical.

On 1May2016 an unexpected snow fell.

Sometimes sharp and crisp doesn’t tell the story. Fuzzy around the edges, that is real life. Between the door of birth and the door of death, uncertainty, that is the real day to day life.

 

Family Vacations, Dubai Style

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In my 2006-2010 search for the Dubai landscape, I found Dubai was two entities. An Emirate, one of the seven that comprise the United Arab Emirates. And a Municipality, in the centre of a burgeoning 230km coastal megalopolis stretching from Ras al Khaymah in the north east all the way south west to Abu Dhabi.

The rulers of Dubai, the Emirate and the Municipality, are the family of Shaik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. Shaikh Mohammed, born in 1949, is the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Emir of Dubai.

He has built Dubai and its hospitality offerings as a place for family vacations.

That’s the official story but even in the ‘winter’, I found the weather too hot to be in the sun very long, before seeking AC. And in the summer, sometimes only after midnight it might be ok for casual walks of more than 15 minutes, before seeking AC.

I was in a conundrum. Maybe it was my cultural upbringing, but I thought that family vacations were outdoor experiences. Yet in the Dubai landscape, I found its climatic extremes always pushed me back indoors. Aha! The aha moment–AC shopping–indoors–spectacular architecture and attractions–yes indoor shopping as a family vacation. Hmm.

Family vacation with outdoor landscape as a condiment. Just use it a little. Hmm…