Dynamic clouds and plants tell me this landscape has got it going!
When sunlight, water, air and plants really get it going, as in this photo, all life forms thrive.
It is real. I felt it. And the mysteries of these overlapping energy cycles still challenge us all.
Gentiana acaulis
Gentiana verna
Lapis lazuli
I just can’t find the melancholy in these blues.
Hemingford Grey Manor (Green Knowe).
If I knew one landscape architect who cared for a garden in your words–the essence of stewardship–a pleasure to read–and with so many connections.
…in the spring…evergreen or deciduous?
How often have you hoped a promise would be fulfilled?
And, just what are all those connotations surrounding the word–promise–all the aura–all the magic?
Today as I looked at the above image, in real life, I was convinced that the promise of spring had been fulfilled–entrancingly fulfilled.
I looked and looked–the greens dark, the greens alive–then I remembered the questions about plants and design–evergreen or deciduous?
Mini-meadow in the lawn–heart pounding variety–spring promise in early April.
Or, both and…
All my life I have seen cool weather grasses from Chicago to Detroit to Boston to the UK to Belgium; but I have never seen like I see in these photos– the Thun and Brienz lakes area of Switzerland.
Everyone’s house has a very small yard which usually includes a vegetable garden, fruit tree or two, flower garden and a flat trimmed lawn area.
In the spring the usually flat trimmed lawn area reveals this just opening array of wild flowers–kind of mini-meadow like.
People cut around these bouquets of wild flowers until the flowering is finished, then the lawns are fully cut.
Next year the wild flowers return. Both lawns and meadows, as I see it.
Anybody seen something similar?
Cool season grass, early April in northern hemisphere following a steadily mild winter.
This morning a red hibiscus distracted me from Yellow Dreams writing.
No, no, no…first it is beauty–something drunk in only by the eyes. Then it is filtered and processed by the mind, by each person’s mind, each person’s experiences…
…enter stage right…the promise of sexual pleasure. Then intelligence says depth of field is not the best, so re-shoot the photos. Then, intelligence asks which hibiscus, species, variety?
Then the curves, the light, the reds, the veins…
Then sustainability–what? Sustainability–now, it has become a charade. Has the beauty been nullified?
What I like about these perceptions of flowers is the broad breadth of interpretation–the seemingly endless options of perception through which anyone can easily drift, easily navigate. That amazes me!
Keeps me returning to the plants, to the gardens, to the landscapes.
It is the mystery we all face…understanding…the landscape we all walk through…the strange bifurcation…spirit…material…search…discovery…and search again…and again…not sure…still looking…tired…still looking.
St James, the first disciple of Jesus to be martyred…somehow his body ended in Northern Spain…a landscape with a history of people that defies, that predates everything we know…the land influenced by people whose roots are mysterious–Basques, Berbers…
Why do people travel this landscape, the way of St James…the Camino de Santiago…the landscape of hope, of discovery?
Yeah sure, to tick a box…but the others…the others…the video below by an Irish Pilgrim captures the others, captures an essence of the search for discovery. It captures the thrill of hope in the journey through the landscape and it captures the melancholy sadness of arrival at the destination and still finding a mystery yet to solve.
That is our life.
And that is why I write landscape stories.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOMMl33Ot5Q?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
A logline is a piece of movie jargon. It is one sentence that tells the whole story.
On a path within a landscape journey…and up ahead, around the corner…
Nobody truly knows just what may be around the next corner…can’t see, can’t hear, don’t know…such are our limitations.
Friday, 24Jan2014, I was, on foot, taking a landscape journey–a split second of which is in the above photograph.
As I took the photo, I thought just as we do not know what lies around the next corner at anytime, we do not know either the time of death or thereafter…but we put the best shine on it.
So I took the photograph, smiled and continued walking.
It was beautiful on the day…and the memories still are beautiful!
I like the essential lightness in this word: landscapeyness.
In real life, I find lightness both in landscapes and also in gardens. Among their many aspects, I like them for their landscapeyness.
Landscapes and gardens–this ultimate pair of two syllable words–each carrying an immeasurable gravitas buried within the burls of all human civilizations–each twisting and turning through the world’s cultures and around and through the time lines of human history–twisting and turning, forming and reforming, always in a deep harmony.
Can landscapeyness and deep harmony co-exist? Of course! Look at these images brimming with landscapeyness and deep harmony.
These images are SchnerenSchnit (German). SchnerenSchnit is scissors cut–the art and craft of cutting paper. It has been practiced in Swiss mountain villages before modern media, and continues on in some places still today. I have included these images of ScherenSchnit because they demonstrate the skeins, the threads, the cellulose, that connect and combine landscapeyness and deep harmony into an almost transcendental relationship between people and plants, gardens and landscapes.
Shelter, water, work, nurture, people, craft, landscape…
Forest, animals, people, nurture, rest, music, landscape…
Flowers, forest, animals, children, parents, play, nurture, landscape…
Flowers, forest, family, shelter, animals, people, nurture, landscape…
The tree of life…
Now why did we move to the city? What are we missing in the city?
