This photo with the foreground geranium detail, the middleground freshwater lake and the background village, forests and mountain clouds… They encapsulate the Swiss Alp landscape that endlessly inspires me each and every day. Makes writing stories like Tangier Gardens a thrill, a charm. Try the story @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
Category Archives: travel
April Showers May Flowers
We had April showers and we found May flowers. Modest pleasures. But roses are so much more.
CJ was not so fortunate, but he did find transcendent pleasures in Tangier Gardens. Read a free Amazon sample of my novel–lots of plants, gardens and landscape adventures–via a safe, clean, secure and direct link @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv.
IRL… now
This is a landscape story—a beautiful family moment!
So what is going on here? A young couple is introducing their baby to one of their cows and recording it on camera. Their cow sports a headdress celebrating its return to the valley, home from pastures high up in the mountains—Alpine life.
Simple family pleasures… but only with work, work with the animals, work with the landscape, work with family—very hard work and the result? Beautiful.
More landscape stories? Here’s a good link: https://www.amazon.com/author/eflaherty
Switzerland: The Real Music
Mountains so alive with energy they breathe clouds—in and out… in and out…
Animating so many levels that I can sense… and so many more levels beyond my senses.
Remarkable solar energy exchanges stream through patches of blue sky to electrify the landscape.
With exuberant displays, creeks dance through fields and gush down mountain cliffs exploding with excess energy into bubbling mists of white foam… all the way down… down… down…
To the valley bottom where they join lively white rivers rushing over boulders, winding through steep mixed forests, chartreuse deciduous and deep dark green conifers, rubbing against each other and bursting with an exquisite energy I can feel, I can see, I can hear.
But I can sense the sadness in older people, the farmers, trudging about daily homestead activities burdened with melancholy memories how it was 70 years ago… compared to the invasive, fast moving trains, packed full of ‘bucket-list’ tourists racing on to their next destination before their vacation is over.
And alas, I too, am just one of those tourists… in Switzerland.
But CJ, in Tangier Gardens, Curious Tales, Orient Espresso and Dubai Sands, thought he wasn’t a tourist. Little did he know. Check it out @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
Blues?
In Tangier Gardens, CJ thought he had the blues until he discovered Heinies, an independent–Tangier mid-twentieth century leftover, a dark basement dive, a friends-only speak-easy serving Austrian draft beer and whiskey, sporting an image of St. Augustine of Hippo behind the bar. While enjoying a shot and a beer, he heard Heinies favorite artist, Janis Joplin singing “Ball and Chain”. The blues. The real blues.
Read a free Amazon sample of my novel–lots of plants, gardens and landscape adventures–via a safe, clean, secure and direct link @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv.
A Losing Battle?
In Tangier Gardens, CJ had so many losing battles—but in the end… Read a free Amazon sample of my novel–lots of plants, gardens and landscape adventures–via a safe, clean, secure and direct link @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv.
Swiss April
Moon Indigo
Which is better? Moon Indigo or Mood Indigo
Duke Ellington: https://youtu.be/RFUSD23ZXEw?si=jWVjptEpjCZx9ydU
Ella Fitzgerald: https://youtu.be/jaq9Gx9GT5E?si=EY9bdAQaB5AizYk9
Frank Sinatra: https://youtu.be/X86SgLwFdqw?si=t3a9CWC8ptSPX2h6
Or are they all shades of the same—the variety of life.
But the variety of life may not alwys be beautiful, as CJ found in Tangier Gardens. Read a free Amazon sample of my novel via a safe, clean, secure and direct link @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv. Got to find the balance. Buy Tangier Gardens today.
Undeniable Change
Weather changes.
Climate changes.
Season changes.
Undeniable.
But does human culture change? And if so, how and why? CJ was forced to ask these questions in my novel Tangier Gardens, buy it now @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
Weeping
Who weeps at the coming of spring?
Exploring plants, landscape, design and cultures… that is what CJ is all about. See how he got started in my novel, Tangier Gardens. Read a free sample @ https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv