Blue River

Another week, another landscape. This one has water in it, and the Lemming still doesn't have much to say.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Lambent Sky, Brumous Band"
  (April 1, 2016)
• "Sunset Halo"
  (March 18, 2016)
• "An Island: Somewhere"
  (January 29, 2016)
• "The Touch of a Vanished Hand"
  (October 30, 2015)
• "Island Flight"
  (September 11, 2015)

Lambent Sky, Brumous Band

The good news is that Norbert Nerdley — you may remember him from last year (December 18, 2015) — was not pressured into producing content for today's post.

The other news is that the Lemming has taken another unannounced vacation: but thoughtfully left a picture, and arranged for Narcissus-X to provide his uniquely-insightful commentary. What follows is from Narcissus-X, artist extraordinary with a penchant for penguins.

Penguins in the Night: Narcissus-X Cogitates

Silent sinuous stream; evanescent emanation; brumous band, obscure exhalation under lambent sky!

And did five fumaroles fitfully favor flippant finches? Thrush not for whom the gull toils, it toils four three two one: and done is the mare's nest of quixotic quintile querns.

Yet softly steals the errant mist, and weaves a circle round rippling dreams of penguins in the night.

More, but not less:

• Not entirely without merit; from the Lemming, selected by Narcissus-X
  • "Sunset Halo"
    (March 18, 2016)
  • "An Island: Somewhere"
    (January 29, 2016)
  • "The Touch of a Vanished Hand"
    (October 30, 2015)
  • "Island Flight"
    (September 11, 2015)
  • "Narcissus-X Proffers Plenteous Provisos"
    (August 14, 2015)
• Profundity and penguins, from Narcissus-X
  • "Narcissus-X: Beware the Droste!"
    (January 21, 2016)
  • "Narcissus-X and the Gloomy Dane"
    (August 12, 2015)
  • "Penguin, Penguin, Burning Bright: Narcissus-X Ponders"
    (September 5, 2014)
  • "Narcissus-X: Baleful Bandicoots; Chimeric Penguins"
    (June 16, 2014)
  • "Plutonic Plasticity, Pattering Pizza, Penguin Peccadilloes"
    (June 7, 2014)

Sunset Halo

Another week, another postcard from the Lemming. No note, no explanation, just a postcard.

Almost-entirely-unrelated posts:

• "An Island: Somewhere"
  (January 29, 2016)
• "The Touch of a Vanished Hand"
  (October 30, 2015)
• "Island Flight"
  (September 11, 2015)
• "Journeys, Destinations, a Dragon, and a Lemming"
  (July 31, 2015)
• "What a Beautiful Day for a Dragon Ride"
  (May 8, 2015)

An Island: Somewhere

Looking on the bright side, at least this week the Lemming left a picture we could post. Next week there may be more: then again, maybe not. Norbert Nerdly has cleared his schedule, just in case. (December 18, 2015)

Posts, related and otherwise:

• "Beware the Droste?!"
  (January 22, 2016)
• "Meet Norbert Nerdly"
  (December 18, 2015)
• "Island Flight"
  (September 11, 2015)
• "Journeys, Destinations, a Dragon, and a Lemming"
  (July 31, 2015)
• " 'We Saved You a Piece' "
  (January 30, 2015)

The Touch of a Vanished Hand

"...And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!..."
(From "Break, Break, Break," Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Similarly-cheerful posts:

• "New Owners, Old Tenant"
  (October 23, 2015)
• "Insomnia at the Wizard's Tower"
  (August 21, 2015)
• "Remember the Paths"
  (July 24, 2015)
• "Smile, Wave, and Hope They Understand"
  (July 10, 2015)
• " 'We Saved You a Piece' "
  (January 30, 2015)

Island Flight

Getting there isn't necessarily half the fun, the Lemming writes. It is, however, an essential prerequisite to arrival: so the traveler may as well relax and enjoy the process.

More from the Lemming, and an alliterative artist:

• "Narcissus-X Proffers Plenteous Provisos"
  (August 14, 2015)
• "Another Holiday for the Lemming"
  (August 7, 2015)
• "With the Lemming at Aunt Ida's"
  (January 23, 2015)
• "From the Mind of the Lemming: Holiday Travel Plans"
  (December 19, 2014)
• "Holiday for the Lemming; or Time, Tide, and a Tired Lemming; or the Lemming Takes a Break"
  (June 6, 2014)

Journeys, Destinations, a Dragon, and a Lemming

"Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination. Then again, sometime it's not."

— the Lemming

Vaguely-related posts:

• "What a Beautiful Day for a Dragon Ride"
  (May 8, 2015)
• " 'We Saved You a Piece' "
  (January 30, 2015)
• "From the Mind of the Lemming: Holiday Travel Plans"
  (December 19, 2014)
• "It's Morning — Somewhere — Or Maybe Near Sunset"
  (September 12, 2014)
• "From the Mind of the Lemming: Guest Speaker"
  (September 6, 2013)

What a Beautiful Day for a Dragon Ride

Dragondale: a fantastic destination for a day out and about riding a beautiful dragon?

Vaguely-related posts:

• " 'We Saved You a Piece' "
  (January 30, 2015)
• "It's Morning — Somewhere — Or Maybe Near Sunset"
  (September 12, 2014)
• "From the Mind of the Lemming: Xanadu Springs"
  (June 20, 2014)
• " 'Anchovies and Peanut Butter?!' "
  (October 30, 2013)
• "From the Mind of the Lemming"
  (January 6, 2012)

Yosemite, Hudson School, and All That

(From Thomas Doughty/National Gallery of Art, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
"Fanciful Landscape," Thomas Doughty.

One thing the Lemming has noticed about nature is that it's big: very, very, big. Small wonder that artists like Thomas Doughty get carried away while painting their landscapes.

Thomas Doughty was with the Hudson River School, which had more to do with the Catskills and Adirondacks than pencil sharpeners and blackboards: although blackboards actually were black back then, and that's another topic.

Anyway, another Thomas took at least part of Horace Greeley's advice, and went west: all the way to California.


(From Thomas Hill/Crocker Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
"Great Canyon of the Sierra, Yosemite," Thomas Hill.

That's "Great Canyon," not "Grand Canyon," which is an unreasonably big washout in another state. Oddly enough, humans in these parts get upset over little washouts, but make a tourist attraction out of one that's a mile deep.

Granted, the Grand Canyon is scenic: and got started long before any humans wandered into this continent, and that's another topic.

Where was the Lemming? Adirondacks, pencil sharpeners, erosion: right.

Thomas Hill's paintings of Yosemite may not be exact representations of the landforms there, but he didn't exaggerate the scenery by much. In Yosemite, there's little need: the place is spectacular.


(From GuyFrancis, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
"U shape valley Yosemite"

Related posts:

• "Night of the Creeping Tree"
  (February 21, 2014)
• " '...Charming, Quiet Neighborhood' "
  (January 3, 2014)
• "Henri Matisse, Color, Light, and Art"
  (January 25, 2011)
• "Saul Steinberg's View from New York City"
  (July 3, 2010)
• "Rio Grand Valley: America's Almost-as-Grand Canyon"
  (September 14, 2009)

Night of the Creeping Tree

(From Caspar David Friedrich, via The Yorck Project and Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
Caspar David Friedrich's "Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon."

Is it just the Lemming, or was that tree moving a moment ago?

Vaguely-related posts:

• "'...Charming, Quiet Neighborhood' "
  (January 3, 2014)
• "A 'Bookish' Librarian, Art, Words, and a Rambling Lemming"
  (November 8, 2013)
• "From the Mind of the Lemming"
  (January 6, 2012)
• "Museum of Modern Art: MoMA isn't a Japanese Cartoon Character"
  (December 7, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: 'Obey Gravity! It's the Law' "
  (July 9, 2011)

"...Charming, Quiet Neighborhood"

("The Abbey in the Oakwood/Abbey among Oak Trees/Abtei im Eichwald," Caspar David Friedrich, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Handyman special: secluded, charming, quiet neighborhood.

Is it just the Lemming, or do those trees look like they stopped moving a moment ago?

Allegedly-related posts:

• "A 'Bookish' Librarian, Art, Words, and a Rambling Lemming"
  (November 8, 2013)
• " 'Fountain of Abundance' and the Psychedelic Buffalo"
  (April 27, 2012)
• "April 6, 1912: Manitoba; the Titanic; Atlantis; a Painting; and a Car"
  (April 6, 2012)
• "Gingerbread, Fruitcake, and Eggnog Nightmare #2"
  (December 23, 2011)
• "Zinnias, in Gardens Ablaze, Sound Good Enough to Eat: But Don't"
  (August 14, 2010)

"Smart Landscape Design" - He's Probably Right

"8 Strategies for a Smart Landscape Design"
Paul McKenzie, Landscaping, HGTV.com

"The traditional view of landscape design is a detailed drawing specifying the location of each shrub and flower bed. In truth, each time you bring home a plant from the nursery you are engaging in the design process, either intentionally or unintentionally.

"Judging from the results I see, there are an awful lot of unintentional designers out there. Many landscapes look like a collection of randomly chosen and haphazardly placed plants. Not only do they lack cohesion, but even worse, the poorly placed plants become liabilities, requiring expensive pest treatments, frequent pruning or complete removal long before they have fulfilled their natural life spans.

"Although an overall plan is a valuable tool, there's nothing wrong with designing on the fly...."

The 'advice' article has some of the sort of design-philosophy content the Lemming expected - which is a good idea, if you're planning to do your own landscaping.

There's also what looks like basic, practical, advice. Like the first item:

"...Plan for equipment access. "It's important to anticipate future access," advises Liz Dean of New Leaf Landscaping in Durham, N.C., "whether it be mowers or stump grinders, or future building projects such as a porch or patio." At some point in the life of your home, you will be faced with a project or repair that requires some loud, monstrous machine to get into your backyard...."

Then the author gets into focal points, formal landscapes, and amoeba-shaped beds. Mr. McKenzie's advice about formal landscapes is: don't. Not unless you've got a really big budget for maintenance. For one thing, if you set up a symmetrical lawn, with matching evergreens, and one dies: you have to replace both, or have a funny-looking yard.

The Lemming's household has a yard that looks lived in. Our landscaping amounts to mowing the grass during summer and shoveling the sidewalk during winter: and that's about it. Obviously, the Lemming isn't an expert on residential landscape design. Not even close.

That said, this article looks like a pretty good, practical, place to start learning about how to set up a yard with relatively few unpleasant surprises.

Somewhat-related posts:

• "Zinnias, in Gardens Ablaze, Sound Good Enough to Eat: But Don't"
  (August 14, 2010)
• "Mercer Island Mansion: Oh My, What a Magnificent Pile"
  (July 21, 2010)
• "Civic Park in Los Angeles: Designers, Dozens of Officials and a $56,000,000 Budget"
  (July 14, 2010)
• "New York City Rooftops: Individual Taste on the Heights"
  (July 13, 2010)
• "Techie Trellises: Really Green Buildings"
  (August 29, 2009)

Zinnias, in Gardens Ablaze, Sound Good Enough to Eat: But Don't

"Zinnias"
Gardens Ablaze

"If you didn't grow any Zinnias this year, put them on the top of the spring wish list for next year, and you will thank yourself over and over all season. This is a plant that is started incredibly easily from seed, flowers very quickly, has a wide range of flower types and colors, withstands full sun and heat, makes an excellent cut flower, attracts bees and butterflies, and can make the difference between so-so garden bed and a spectacular garden showcase. Whether a beginner or a seasoned gardener, there is a Zinnia out there for every taste, budget, and style. Creating a Zinnia garden is the perfect way to teach children about gardening, and they will delight in the big, bright, bold colors."

The style is a bit on the breathless side: but the page on zinnias seems like a pretty good introduction to this moderately hardy garden flower.

About the title of this post? Zinnias aren't, we're told, poisonous - but "they are not a culinary flower."

But they sure look nice.

Mercer Island Mansion: Oh My, What a Magnificent Pile

"Mercer Island Mansion For Sale"
The Luxury Brokers (current listings)

"...Featured on HGTV's world premier of 'What's With That Really Expensive House'. The signature of a Patrician! A commanding estate palatial in its carriage; global in its attitude. Rich architectural embellishments; the great hall evocative of the palaces of fairy tales...."


(from The Luxury Brokers, used w/o permission)

And, if you have to ask how much it costs: you can't afford it. The asking price is $40,000,000 USD.

The page's literary style is a trifle florid: but it's real estate advertising copy, after all.

This place is - big. As the description says: "The specification are too elaborate and detailed for an all inclusive list." They had a shot at it, though. In addition to "unparalleled dining salons," the mansion has "a master suite of epic proportions encompassing the marble bath, personal workout gym, a wardrobe wing."

I particularly like that phrase: "a wardrobe wing." I'd like to know how many square feet it covers, and if there's more than one level.

The 22,779 square foot house was built in 2001, with four fireplaces and at least one room that looks like an upscale hotel lobby.

This Mercer Island mansion is probably worth the $40,000,000 price tag: it's on 2 acres, with 175 feet of lakefront - and space for a 140-foot yacht.

Mention of room for a yacht made me curious. Real estate listings can be - imaginative. There was a time when "secluded" might mean "you need a helicopter to reach it." Maybe you need a boat to get to Mercer Island?

Nope. I checked. Mercer Island is just east of Seattle, Washington, connected by Interstate 90. Looks like you can get there by boat - but that you've got the option of driving.

The Luxury Real Estate listing cautions that this mansion is "Only for the discriminating." I'm inclined to agree. The description doesn't use the word, "opulent," but it very well could have.

Remember, the brokers said: "The specification are too elaborate and detailed for an all inclusive list."

Toward the bottom of the page, they have a shot at listing them, anyway:

• Basement
• Bathroom Off Master Bedroom
• Bonus/Rec Room
• Den/Library/Office
• Dining Room
• Double Pane/Storm Windows
• Family Room/Great Room
• Fireplace
• Hot Tub and/or Spa
• Security System
• Sunroom/Solarium/Atrium, Indoor Vaulted Ceilings
• Wall-to-Wall Carpet
• Boat Dock
• Bus Line, On or Near
• City View

And the list goes on. There are several more photos, including one of the water - taken around sunrise, or sunset, it looks like.

As I've written before, I'm glad that some folks are able to afford places like this. When they come up for sale, I get the fun of reading about them, without the hassle of having to take care of two acres of landscaping and a house that's got almost as much floor space as five basketball courts, if I did the math right.

Civic Park in Los Angeles: Designers, Dozens of Officials and a $56,000,000 Budget

"Civic pride shaping Civic Park"
Entertainment, Los Angeles Times (July 14, 2010)

"Downtown's $56-million project, which has its official groundbreaking Thursday, audaciously aims to be many things to many people - and that leaves some devilish details to sort out.

"Downtown's $56-million Civic Park is finally showing signs of life - and not just because construction crews have begun working this week on the sloping site between the Music Center and City Hall, with an official groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for Thursday morning.

"Over the last several months, a late-in-the-game effort by the park's designers, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, to give it a crisper look and strengthen its overall conceptual framework has paid real dividends. The design still shows the strain of trying to answer to dozens of interested public officials and constituent groups and their differing visions of what the park might be. Yet it has also begun to assert, for the first time, a coherent aesthetic identity...."

There's an old saying, 'too many cooks spoil the stew.' For the Los Angeles taxpayers' sakes, I hope that doesn't happen with their Civic Park.

I don't envy the people who do the actual work, trying to design a functional park:

"...For now, the main challenge at the park, which was funded by a $50-million payment from developer Related Companies as part of its now-stalled Grand Avenue mixed-use project, remains the same: how to squeeze an effective design into a tricky, sloping site pockmarked with underground garages and concrete ramps. In that sense the park is a symbol of the hurdles Los Angeles as a whole faces in trying to retrofit its civic spaces for a future in which cars no longer play such a dominant role in urban planning or daily life...."

Whatever happens, I'm pretty sure that someone folks will write letters to the editor, saying that if only the designers had listened to their ideas - - -.

On the other hand, if the finished product looks half as good as those drawings, the place will be quite attractive.

I wonder, though, looking at that top picture: What sort of trees have lavender leaves?

New York City Rooftops: Individual Taste on the Heights

"NYC Rooftops"
Trendland (May 31, 2010)

"Nowadays, Cyril and I, find ourselves walking the streets of NYC and staring up at all the rooftops, dreaming about our very own New York City rooftop atrium, merging architectural sculpture and botanical madness. Jwilly tapped into that fantasy with his collection of NYC rooftop photos.

"Though his photos don't even begin to touch on New York's most exquisite rooftops, they give you a glimpse of what is above the sky-scrapping madness...."

The post has 16 photos in all, of 15 remarkable rooftops. There isn't much text, and nothing about the location of the photos for the first 13. Apart from "New York City" - which covers quite a lot of territory.

Another set, provided by Marie-Joelle Parent, tells where the roofscapes are: which I really appreciated.

The original set includes a few whose colors remind me of the old colorized postcards: I suppose it may have been the lighting that day, or maybe the images were processed to pull out details.

I don't quite buy either "madness" in the post's introduction. I agree that the design of contemporary cities, experienced from street level, needs serious re-thinking. I also think that folks, left to their own devices, are apt to create residential designs that could make a professional decorator shriek. But "madness?" I wouldn't go that far.

Here are a few of my favorites:


(from Jwilly, via Mini Boss, via Trendland, used w/o permission)


(from Marie-Joelle Parent, via Trendland, used w/o permission)

That's a closeup of a scene shown in "Green Diamond in a Upper East Side Rooftop, from Marie-Joelle Parent.

I'll say it: that patio design is a gem.

Rio Grand Valley: America's Almost-as-Grand Canyon

(From Andreas F. Borchert, via Wikimedia Commons, used without permission)

That's the Rio Grande Valley: Not quite as big as the Grand Canyon, nowhere near as well known, and spectacular in its own right.

Google has assembled a decent timeline for the Rio Grande Valley's history, from 1540 to 2007.

There's quite a bit of information about the Rio Grande River at "RIO GRANDE." (The Handbook of Texas Online)

To read some resources, the Rio Grande is a Texas river. For most of its length, it's the boundary between Texas and Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León (for nine miles), and Tamaulipas, but it starts in Colorado and runs through New Mexico on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Going past Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I found some spectacular photos at "Panoramic Pictures Sandia Mountains Rio Grande Albuquerque New Mexico." (unit16.net)

An 'It'll Do' Website About Landscaping

---

Updated (August 31, 2009)

Designer (profile not available) took the time to write a comment, pointing out some some apparent inconsistencies between this micro-review and the website. I've been unable to add the information, as suggested by Designer, since www.the-landscape-design-site.com wasn't online when I checked, shortly after 9:00 a.m. this morning.

---

"The Landscape Design Site"
"Do It Yourself Landscape Design"

"The following pages focus on what you need to know to successfully and easily create your own finished landscape design without hiring a designer or landscaping contractor.

"You'll be exposed to some real professional knowledge, advice, tips, recomendations[!], and do-it-yourself landscape resources and pictures...."

Okay: It's a commercial website, for Steve Boulden / S&S Designed Landscaping in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Boulden would like you to pay for his services. And, it's not the best-designed or maintained website on the planet. It was last updated a year ago, I had to click past a couple pages on my way to 'pictures' - and only one of the three links I clicked sent me to the external site it was supposed to.

That said, I think this could be a pretty good place to start, for someone who was planning a rather ambitious makeover of their lawn. There's a fair amount of text with what appears to be pretty good, general set of advice and ideas.

If I were starting a project like that, I wouldn't end my online search there, though. There's a lot more online: I suggest going to Google and tying in 'landscape design' - without the quotes.

That's if I were starting a project. This family doesn't have a lawn: we've got a yard. Which, considering our four kids and the size of the extended family, is just as well. It's nice to have a largish swath of grass, trees, and shrubs with a 'lived in' look.

Techie Trellises: Really Green Buildings

"8-Story Antigravity Forest Facade Takes Root"
Wired Magazine (August 24, 2009)

"When Patrick Blanc was a boy, he suspended plants from his bedroom wall and ran their roots into a fish tank. The greenery received nourishment from the diluted - ahem - fertilizer and purified the water in return. Forty-five years on, the French botanist's gardens have grown massive in scale. One inside a Portuguese shopping mall is larger than four tennis courts, and there's one in Kuwait that's almost as big. But Blanc's recently completed facade for the Athenaeum hotel in London (shown) could be his most high-profile project yet. Looming over Green Park, it's an eight-story antigravity forest composed of 12,000 plants...."

There are about a half-dozen photos with the article, showing the vertical gardens.

Nit-picking time: "antigravity forest" is a stretch. Yes, it's unusual to see a landscaping project running up the side of a building on a high-tech trellis: but there's no breakthrough physics involved here: just a somewhat techie twist on the old idea of encouraging plants to shelter our buildings.

There's a little discussion of the technology involved - and how plants are selected for this unusual treatment.

The basic idea is very smart, I think: What's not mentioned in the Wired article is that the plants stop sunlight from reaching the walls of a building. In climates where solar heating is a problem during some seasons - like Minnesota in summer - keeping buildings in the shade like this could mean big savings on air conditioning.

Besides: those uber-tall trellises look cool.

SeasonScape by Alexiuss

"SeasonScape

by Alexiuss, on DeviantArt.com

This is a remarkable piece of work by one of the artists in the Deviant Art community. Don't let the name of the place fool you: It's about art, not political activism, as far as I can tell. I'm a member myself, but not in this league.