Gentiana acaulis
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I just can’t find the melancholy in these blues.
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Tag Archives: swiss alps
The Promise?
…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?
Lawns or Meadows…
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.
…on a landscape journey…
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!
Landscapeyness
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?
Mysteries to solve…
Interlaken, Switzerland, in the Hohematte, looking East
Inspirational mountains…settled by humans longer than the written record…
Nevertheless the human landmark for more than eight hundred years in this inspirational landscape is a tribute to God. This piece of land and the human shelters built there still, today in 2013, remind all of the human existential questions that stir in the landscape…mysteries to solve.
Crystal Vision, Beta Edition, 26Sep2013
Crystal Vision is a landscape story. It is a novella, literary fiction.
The past reaches for today
In Crystal Vision, George Moleson, an emerging professional, leaves his landscape architecture roots in Southern California, to build his international career, becoming a key person on a huge new town project located just near the Tropic of Cancer, on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.
After six cosseted years on that project, a quick succession of personal and professional events batter George. They untether him; and he embarks into the labyrinthine mists of landscapes…landscapes the nature of he had never ever imagined.
Read Crystal Vision preface and the ten Episodes’ summaries.
From Bern to Bernese Oberlands Jungfrau Region
Mountains, Plants, Water, Sky
Humans in the Mountains
Then please tell me if you like it or have any questions about it.
Thank you for your time and interest in the landscape.
Crystal Vision and Labyrinthine Mists
As I move toward the completion of my second landscape story, Crystal Vision, I have updated the novella’s story line.
Labyrinthine Mists is the landscape through which the main character moves.
Geo was from LA. He was a young and successful landscape architect; yet he sensed…an unease. He took an offer to work in Saudi Arabia, an excellent challenge where he would have exponentially larger responsibilities.
During his six years on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, his professional and social life evolved inside a bubble, a cultural bubble protecting him from uncertainty…until…the bubble burst.
He lost his tether to ‘reality’ and began a blind journey into a landscape labyrinth. A labyrinth by definition does not have an end; but Geo sensed…an obligation and something important to find. And so, he embarked upon an exploration of labyrinthine landscapes he had never before imagined.
Public Realm
Bonigen Alpabzug
What is urban landscape and what is public realm?
This is a September 2013 view of main street in the center of Bonigen, a Swiss town of roughly 2,000 people. It is a town that has been for centuries.
Every summer the Bonigen farmers take their cows on a journey to the high Alp ‘pastures’. The above view shows the festival of the cows’ return journey (Alpabzug) from the high Alps. The cows and other grazing animals are feted. Plants and flowers make up head dresses for the cows. And all the residents come to cheer for them as they are paraded down main street.
The urban landscape, the public realm overflows with landscape and agricultural realities–the realities of inter-relationships among people, plants, animals and landscape.
People connecting with landscape via…
…music.
Most North Americans are overwhelmed by the convenience and connectivity of the various forms of public transport in Switzerland. It is an effectively interwoven network that begins at the airports and train stations where it is most dense. Then it gradually thins out as you travel higher into the mountains and further away from the cities.
At the final destination, you can find Swiss people in blissful contact with the landscape, as the following images demonstrate.
How much do you think access to this landscape pleasure is worth in any urban design?
Look at the faces of these people 2,250 meters above mean sea level…transcendental enjoyment if I have ever seen it! Music, people, landscape.
The landscape above
The landscape below
Alphorns
Alphorn painted details
Alphorn craftsmanship
Landscape, alphorns, people
Landscape, people, music
People and music
People and music
People in the landscape