the taunus woods on the edge to november.
my parents visited me for a short week-end at the end of october which brought us back up into the taunus mountains again, to go mushroom-hunting ( of course 😂 ). the leaves were slowly loosing their colourful demeanor and more rusty red tones were taking over - so typical for the upcoming month of november. while october is my most favourite month of the year, mellow november is very dear to me, too, so by now the anticipation towards that month usually lowers itself upon my brain waves. it's a time of introspection, of slowly snuggling up inside yourself again, staying in more and enjoying the quietness that settles in when the colder months come around. while i am always very sad to see october go, november is not a bad follow-up at all, and that's exactly because of the things i just mentioned. plus, it's a spooky season, much spookier than october actually is, filled with fogs and rain and moody weather. in that first inbetween month towards winter my mind is still enamoured with that prospect and i relish it greatly. because when december rolls around, that is the time where i start sinking into a murkiness that i can only describe as a mixture of burn-out and slight depression which will probably last into late february/ early march ( unless there is snow on the ground, which is a sure way to cheer me up :P )
but what am i doing here? let's return to that last little bit of october, before moving on to those times!
i haven't shot too many pictures on this mushroom hunt - so my basket was already half full here!
this one is probably a pholiota squarrosoides, though i am super unsure about it! in any way it is toxic, but it looks pretty for sure!
found this palisade near hofgut georgenthal - a hotel hidden deep in the taunus woods that has a golf course attached to it. i think it indicates the roman limes wall - an ancient border construction that went through all of the taunus mountains. there is a loop road around the hofgut that is all about the upper germanic-rhaetian limes and what it was supposed to protect ( the roman empire from germania magna in this case ). while we did not come here to walk this road, it still was a nice gimmick to stumble upon this replica of what a roman palisade construction looked like back in the day.
often these palisades would be made out of clefted oak trees, the flat and smooth side would look towards the outside ( towards great germany ). this palisade looks rather lousy, though, in reality they looked probably more like this.
i do love late autumn in its bronze and rust-coloured beauty ❤
the yellow cracked bolete is one of those mushrooms that you can eat, actually! but it is often very spongy, so it is not as highly recommended by mushroom afficionados as other wild mushrooms such as the porcino or the bay boletus. in germany we call this mushroom 'ziegenlippe' - goat's lip - because it kinda looks like the muzzle of a goat and feels like it, too? when not as dry as this exemplar, it has a very soft and round touch to it :)
finding these mushrooms is always such a highlight! this very cheeky-looking babe is an old stinkhorn ( phallus impudicus ). it got its latin name ( translated 'impure penis ) because it looks a lot like an erect penis, and in combination to its awful rotten carcass smell when aged, it definitely isn't a very favourable name for this interesting mushroom 😂 despite that, mushroom connoisseurs deem it a fantastic edible mushroom when it is a wee little baby, called witch's egg, claiming that it has a kinda radish taste. it looks like this ( and is incredibly hard to find, mind you! ). when it grows taller and older a strange black slimy suffusion develops on its hat - the gleba - a mass of spores that attracts flies, that then end up distributing them into the wild. which again, creates the awkward association to the sperm-holding human penis 😂 as soon as all the gleba is gone, only the white 'corpse finger' is left still standing, revealing the interesting structure underneath. while the structure of the head looks like it could be related to morel mushrooms, they are definitely not belonging into this group, but to the phallus group ( all of them incredibly interesting, some even develop some kind of perforated curtain! ).
close-up of the hat. due to them often growing on old burial mounds, there were superstitions in old times that the buried corpse underneath was victim of an unatoned crime and therefore wanted to warn people to go through a similar fate with showing its upraised 'finger'! by the way, by the time flies and insects reaped the gleba harvest completely, the stink of the mushroom finally dissipates and you can safely get closer to it and examine it in detail, which is what i did to take these photos! i have never found a spawning exemplar to date, and i am kinda glad i haven't, i don't know if i would continue to find them as interesting 😂
the taunus woods - a mixture of coniferous & deciduous trees.
my dad found an amazing specimen of a scarletina bolete ( though slightly nibbled on by slugs ). this mushroom is one of my absolute favourites because it is damn colourful! from above, it has a maroon hat, but when you look under it, the pores glow brightly scarlet. the meat of the mushroom is yellow, and when you cut it, it immediately turns deep blue! so... in this mushroom alone, there are so many contrasting and revolting colours involved, that we in germany call it a witch boletus - because it is magical! it is considered an edible mushroom, one of the very finest, but in raw form it is toxic, so whenever you find this one, please don't nibble on it, and please be sure to identify it correctly before taking it home and cooking it very thoroughly ( at least 20 minutes ). the similar specimens you can confuse it with are the lurid bolete ( it has a different pattern on its stem ) & the satan's bolete ( which is in my brain very easily to identify because it has a creme-coloured, almost white head ) - they can cause intolerances and even heavy poisoning that might lead to death ( the satan's bolete doesn't have its name for nothing, y'all ;P ).
i love the very dense and firm consistence of the flesh! the hat itself feels very velvety to the touch!
some more pictures from the woods - enjoying the lovely atmosphere!
in the evening we would make a little walk around town. i actually love evening and night walks, when the city is illuminated and the streets are quiet and calm. but i rarely go and do them on my own! i guess there's still this anxiety-induced notion that, as a woman, you might get harmed when out and about after sundown.
we made a quick visit to lili ( former lilien-carré ) - a mall around where i live. it was built in 2007, so it's still kinda new-ish and has a very interesting architecture ( click here for exteriors ). they had just recently renovated the whole place and renamed it. these kidney-like decorations are actually supposed to resemble mangos, and where designed by schwitzke & partner gmbh - an architecture and design firm from düsseldorf. i don't know what they symbolize in context to the mall, it really is just a running-off-the mill mall, without any exotic connotations that would warrant the hanging of flying mangos. it sure looks pretty, though? kinda?
the main entrance situation with one of the local starbucks shops.
always loved these prominent circumferential hallways and its terrace-mannered dome construction.
a new addition as well - these lit-up wall constructions.
on the roof of the lili there is something that you could call the rear entrance, which leads you onto the top floor - and right into the arms of a fitness center. i am very sorry for the grainy quality of these, i haven't gotten the hang of adequately editing night images, yet 😅
next to that glass cube are several more buildings - a medical center and a hotel.
from the roof you always have a nice view onto the central train station of wiesbaden and its forecourt, and also onto gustav-stresemann-ring - an arterial street that leads into and out of wiesbaden. the main station building is a gorgeous example of art nouveau architecture ( it was opened in 1906! ).
a glimpse into one of the two parking garages of the lili.
moving in a circle around the dome. in the back the clock tower of the central station, on the right, the parking garage.
a canopied access leading from the garage to the entrance of the fitness studio ( which also serves as an entrance to the mall, by the way ).
back in the streets of wiesbaden, i was especially enamoured with this building inside adolfsallee! there are no specifications on this one, but most of the houses on this street were first erected around 1870. they often appear in a classical design, some of them were enhanced or embellished in more modern ways over the decades. the clinker facade of this house strikes me as very 80ies, but the basic model still has very distinct neo-classical details, such as the columns of the entrance and balcony section.
a view up adelheidstraße, which is very close to adolfsallee.
we ended our evening stroll by saying hi to the luisenkirche ( aka st. bonifatius - its real name ). this beautiful church at the crown of luisenplatz - a french-style inner city plaza - was built from 1844 to 1849 by philipp hoffmann. it's a gorgeous church, but unfortunately it is situated very close to a bus station. the plaza in front of it, though very beautiful itself, too, is a well-known meeting place for the homeless and the aimless as well, which has given the area an unsafe reputation.
its twin steeples are richly decorated in neo-gothic style and always look great against any sky, be it blue, or grey, or cloudy or a nightly one!
saying goodbye to october with this last image of st. bonifatius church!
what will november of the year 2019 bring, you ask?
stay curious!
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