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august '17: apothecary garden & early mushroom hunts.

inside the garden.

the apothecary garden is a place i've never visited before the day i made my way there. it's a little bit of a walk ( it's situated outside the inner city core in a little valley called aukammtal ). i've made it there via car, because it was too hot outside to walk for a longer amount of time. yeah, i don't do well with heat. but it was one of those days where i simply had to leave my flat because otherwise it would've definitely messed with my brain. and even though it was damn hot, i really enjoyed visiting this little place of greenery. i hope to revisit in spring this year, when more plants are blooming and everything looks less bare ( i recently made a walk through the city that lead me past the garden & it was really dull & dismal, i almost didn't recognize it! ) winter sure changes a place, especially when there's a lot of plants involved.

well, the garden is full of plants & herbs that have some kind of effect on human beings, be it for medicinal or poisonous reasons or other useful things ( like plants used for dyeing textiles, food ingredients etc ). it's basically a garden full of plant power and you can either use them for your well-being & ecological reasons or the other way round - for unhealthy reasons, too. i have a basic knowledge of plants in general, but it's always interesting to learn more or renew what i learned before. i'm not actively using a lot of plants in my day to day life ( other than tending to some succulents in my home, which i really, deeply love or the occassional herbal tea i drink when i'm sick ), but in a different dimension i am probably a nature witch living inside a little cottage up in the mountains or somewhere remote, with cats & dogs & other animals as my companions and i'm probably cooking up some nutritious soups or potions. because that really sounds like something i would like to do someday. return to my provincial roots & try to live a simpler life in unison with nature. it's a nice little dream, right? i do have quite a lot of those nonsense dreams in my head.

a plant i can't remember anymore. maybe the toothpick-plant?


another plant i can't determine.

little friendly pollen seeker on a thistle flower.

some dye plants. blue false indigo mainly? but i think there's true indigo in there as well.

close-up. when i think about it this might actually be a knotweed variant.

view of another part of the garden.

a special kind of sunflower. never seen such a type of sunflower before. don't know the word for it in english, but in german it's called gefüllte sonnenblume ( filled/stuffed sunflower ).

i was a little bit enamoured with this sunflower, really beautiful!

vine leave pavilion.

there were loads of bees in that pavilion. i made a little break here, though and enjoyed the humming & buzzing.


chocolate cosmos. they look so velvety, i love it.


the seeds of the garden angelica.

couldn't get enough of the chocolate cosmos flowers. they smell like dark chocolate, especially on sunny, warm days. i love flowers that smell like food 💕

purple cone flowers ( and some yellow ones, too. )

the texture of their florets is really satisfying visually 😍


more garden views.

i really like when blossoms fade & there's only this left. looks like an alien plant, right?

ricinus plant with fruits & blossoms. another plant that looks really alien, right?to me plants are a total different life form, actually.


passion fruit blossom. maybe THE most espressive blossom there is.

a little patch of a butterfly meadow. if you don't know what that means you have to stay there for a while and watch what kind of insects will be flying to this little part of the garden. in general a wild meadow attracts a lot of butterflies & insects and i think it's the most beautiful thing ever. it's really worth it to let a part of the garden grow wildly.

on a different note, late august is the starting point for mushroom hunting. on one weekend my parents visited & we went on a little mushroom collecting spree.

panther cap - a poisonous & psychoactive mushroom.

found a huge bay polete. can you spot it?

it's a really delicious and edible mushroom. one of my favourites.

bellflower with dewdrops.

unfortunately didn't find a 4-leaf clover. it still looked lush & pretty, though.

the wood in late august / early autumn is always such a wonderful green place, so full of growth & lusciousness.

another bay polete!

this is a strange little mushroom i absolutely have no idea of what it might be. looks like a sponge to me.

we opened it up and it looked even more strange from the inside. i think it's some kind of tinder fungus. even though it doesn't look like one at all.

made friends with a little frog.

this little puddle of water was filled with even more soon-to-be frogs! polliwogs are such interesting tiny creatures. some of them already had tiny legs!

i could've stayed there much longer & watch them, but my parents were fast gone & i had to hurry to catch up.

we decided to have lunch in a look-out restaurant which had a wonderful view on wiesbaden & mainz. the food wasn't that great, though, but i'm not one of those persons who will get agitated over that and make a fuzz. it wasn't that bad either, you know. the service was a bit strange, but the food was mainly okay, albeit a little haphazardly prepaired. 

i love how the rhine river meanders inbetween the cities of wiesbaden ( biebrich district ) & mainz. this view is absolutely one of my favourites. if you ever are in the area, visit the schläferskopf mountain. there you can find the kaiser-wilhelm-turm ( emperor willhelm tower ) and one of the best views of the mainz/wiesbaden area.

and one last picture of the interior of the restaurant. it was such a cozy plaze, really beautiful even. we sat outside though, because, hello? views?

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