Journeys to Portals

I write novels–about how to succeed in an international world of strange cultures.

Main protagonist is American. He wants to stay home but life has another plan for him.

He grew up in New Mexico, influenced by the works of Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams, inspired by the New Mexico landscape and beguiled by J.B. Jackson’s words on human culture and landscape that “there was something alive down deep inside the landscape”. Eager to learn more about the environment, fine arts and literature, off he went to college. Then his life took a turn to the weird. And so the series begins.

He was educated in the schools of political correctness but his experience in the real world teaches him otherwise.

He is practical and his international adventures always involve landscapes, gardens, plants and foreign cultures.

Fun fast reads.

If you are interested in ‘one step beyond’ landscape adventures in exotic geographies, then please sign up for my newsletter via Mail Chimp at https://bit.ly/3q5lcaq.

Buy my TANGIER GARDENS e-book and paperback

at https://amzn.to/3suCIpw

Sometimes life takes us down roads to places we never wanted to be. These are landscape stories. What makes them landscape stories? They are told by a professional landscape architect, CJ, whose expatriate international career put him in real life touch with landscape legends.  He wasn’t looking for legends—they found him.

Legends—from the Moors, from West Africa, from the Sahara, from the Golden Triangle, from the Swiss Alps, from Anatolia.

Myths? Allegories? Fables? Legends? The landscape—where an ever-vibrant blend of human life and culture thrives—one step beyond. If you haven’t been there… you have no idea. CJ went there. You should too. Get started with Tangier Gardens.

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flahertylandscape belongs to Edward Flaherty, a published novelist and retired American landscape architect.

The purpose is to start the visitors on journeys in the landscape, in gardens, and among plants to discover portals.

Portals? They are moments that take the visitor out of the present into other realms.

Other realms defy definition. They vary with each visitor.

I will start you on the journeys. Your challenge is to discover the portals. 

The journey is free and portals have no entry fees.

Please visit the blog. And if you like landscape journeys, please click the button above and to the right to follow flahertylandscape–there is room for everyone.

28 thoughts on “Journeys to Portals”

  2. Thanks for connecting with me on Linked n. These look fascinating and just from reading the home page, touch on similar life interests… I’m a landscape designer and horticulturist, a garden writer who has been told I should also write romantic novels, have visited Morocco and Tangier, lived in the middle east and love the fusion of cultures and the places where they meet. Though I have little time for reading, this looks like something I will love.

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  3. The combination of landscape, fiction, and art in your blog is fascinating and something of a mystery.

    The story of landscape in my life is a story of a longing to create art with the pallet of nature, discovering what is real, by playing with the raw materials of creation. Recently, my interest in landscape has become one of practicality…the return to the old ways, utilizing the elements of nature for more than spaces of beauty and wonder — utilizing personal space for growing food — the edible landscape.

    Whether fiction, art or practical, there is no doubt that a landscape is an influence on the lives of the people and animals in its midst.

    Blessings on your adventure.

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    • Thanks Becky for sharing your landscape perceptions. I hope others of you do, too.

      I like Becky’s varied layer approach to landscape…mental to the real in art; and utilizing personal space for growing food…both essential in their own ways but the last–the edible landscape, in these days, is so very important.

      Becky made me think that I need to say that my landscape stories are challenging and not focussed on neo-romantic beauty and wonder…why not beauty and wonder? Well, heck most of you have that right outside your front door or at the edge of your neighborhood. 😉 Don’t need someone else’s second hand experience, right!

      I write my landscape stories like a walk through a garden, through a landscape…places that are a bit familiar but, at any given time you can, in a relaxed sort of way, just discover something, or find something fun…or awesome. Those are the landscape stories…plot secondary…characters secondary…the journey through them–primary!

      Listen, I am convinced that I don’t need to lead any reader by the nose. Each reader brings important resources on the journey through my landscape stories. In recognition of those individual resources, I provide opportunities for discovery within the many landscape threads in the stories.

      I set up the stories to have, in summary, four fundamental, discrete yet interweaving, layers of experience–sensual, emotional, intellectual and spiritual…these give a variety of entries…doors…windows, for a variety of readers into the unforeseen.

      You all can take it from there. Have fun, enjoy the reading.

      PS: As the author, I will never give you the answer. That is your challenge as a reader…exactly as it is in life.

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  9. Hi Edward!
    I love the concept and connection that you’ve made as life being a landscape in and of itself. I see much truth among the layers of it – much like an onion. Thank you for stopping by my blog! Sunny regards, Heidi

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  12. Strange that–stories without ends–strange package–like opening a wrapped present again and again without ever getting to the present. Does that say something about a life condition we all face? Oh, don’t mind me–I’m heading outside for a walk. All the best, Grant! 🙂

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  13. I stepped away from my existential response to Grant Richard Jones above by saying I was ‘heading outside for a walk’. I am attaching an audio file which is music from the Bernese Oberland group, Edelwyss-Starnen. They sing the last verse of Mys Alpli, their alps. High in the Berner Oberland, an alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where animals can be grazed. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. These people share their love of the landscape and its animals in their music.

    Listen to that, let it find its way from your ears to your heart–that is a walk outside. 🙂

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  14. I like the your approach much from gardens, to … all types of interactions with the landscapes!
    I experience the landscape and write about it when it becomes embedded in me…thanks for visiting my blog – – you introduced me indirectly to your blog!

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  15. You can unfollow someone. On your profile in the right panel, below your list of friends, there is a section called People XXX is Following. Click that heading and it will take you to a list of people you follow. To the right of each person are options to Add as Friend, or Stop Following.

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  19. Mr. Edward,
    Thanks for visiting my Blog and putting your likes.
    I was amazed to see and browse your Blog and have followed it also.
    I shall come and read other posts in due course.
    I felt that a person like you who can write such beautiful articles and has such wonderful thoughts should be commenting on my Posts.
    Please do not mistake me.
    Thanks again or your visit.
    Regards
    Shiva

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  21. Thank you for the ‘like’, Edward. It’s amazing how much setting, in real life or in a short story, can impact what can occur or be told. Interesting concept. : )

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  23. Edward, I love your blog, as well as your writing. I love the way you create through landscapes. It all pertains to life as a whole, right down to a macrocosm of possibilities. Please let me know if I am seeing this wrong, but I believe I see right where you are coming from in that, I strive to do that very thing with my poetry. I want to break down nature with all the senses. So, I must tell you how remarkably brilliant this is. To leave stories open ended is also fabulous. The human mind can take those stories anywhere. For myself, I think of it as mini vacations for people who cannot get away. I know I am going to love reading your stories. I thank you so much for dropping in and checking mine out. I am so excited about your writing, I could just burst. Thank you so much for being, and for being remarkable. Much light and Happy Thanksgiving.

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