admiring the early blossoms of the cherry plum.
the alperstedter ried is a nature reserve very close to my home village in thuringia, it is a lowland perfusion fen that almost dried out to to extensive water managing and mining endeavours ( and also housing construction - i think there's a former military area around here as well ). in the past 40 years a lot of effort was put into restoring this fen and today you can look at a beautiful wild landscape again, where the marsh areas have returned to and the fen slowly re-seizes its former expansion. with the help of animal conservationists such as 'harzer rotvieh', water buffalos & exmoor ponies, the protected landscape slowly returns to its former state - that of a very important lowland fen which grows rare plants, and gives home again to tiny insect critters and special bird species that were believed to being extinct in this area. the whole area covers an expanse of 115 hectares and is fenced in, to make sure that the landscape stays mostly undisturbed ( and the animal landscape conservators don't escape ;D ). there's a visitor's path through the reserve and several look-out spots, too, which makes the reserve more accessible for people interested in learning about the fen! i was quite surprised to learn that we have such a special landscape and reserve basically right out our front door! getting close to the animals in it and exploring the raw, scraggy-looking ( but full of hidden life ) landscape, was such a treat and made me realize again how many special places we got here in germany, and how much i love learning about them all! when i was a kid i never much cared for all the landscapes in the thuringian basin, but the older i get, the more i realize how much i underestimated my birthplace. it is a little paradise that wants to be looked at more closely, revealing secrets that might get overlooked when you are a teenager looking to flee a seemingly boring landscape and close-mindedness. in retrospect, i scold myself everytime i visit thuringia for ever having believed that it is small, ugly, boring and underwhelming, because when i now return, oftentimes i think it's the other way round! i often get overwhelmed with feelings of disbelief and appreciation, over what i had overlooked all these years ago.
some not fenced in pastures close to the reserve.
the landscape of the alperstedter ried is flat and leveled, an open range land predestined for extensive grazing. every now and then it's broken up by ponds, crop-out springs & and old water canals. how i understand it, they were created artificially over time to create more cultivatable surfaces, but now help to give back moisture and wetness to the fen by controlling the water levels ( good especially when there are droughts ). small woods can be found as well, giving the cattle and the ponies some quiet retreats.
a little look-out mound that oversees the whole reserve quite well. ( no tough thing when everything is flat as a flounder ;P )
reed succession area.
mossy bushes and trees were everywhere, growing right next to little ditches ( former drainage channels now closed to keep the water inside the reserve ).
almost prairie land!
i loved these small wetland areas!
a group of three. the trees were still quite bare in the middle of march ( spring often starts much later here - up to two weeks later - in thuringia than in the rhine main plains and gains traction only in late april ).
i loved this image of my parents wandering around the meadows by the lowland riparian forests. ❤
and then we met the exmoor ponies! there are now 22 of them living in the area, helping to keep the grasses & reeds short on the oligotrophic grasslands - the danger of a blocking with silt is supposed to be averted with this method of landscaping.
you could get quite close to these british natives that feel most comfortable in moor & fen landscapes. they looked so very cozy with their winter fur!
this one stared at me for the longest time, seemingly wondering what i was doing with the strange apparatus that i held to take photos of it.
i really couldn't get enough watching these gorgeous equines! they were so peaceful and calm ❤
further away, in quite some distance to the ponies, i detected some red cattle - the harzer rotvieh! another very robust species that loves the meadows and pasture landscapes that the alperstedter ried provides. i was also searching for the water buffalos, but they hid well deep in the surrounding woodlands ( i found some when we left the reserve later on, but they were so hidden that taking proper photos was just not possible ).
stork on a foraging spree. the meadows with the ponds provide quite a feast for them!
a calf was trotting close to one of its family members, jumping around wildly and happily! it was so good to see this kid frolicking around!
another one was far in the back. i am inclined to believe that the dark one in the front was a water buffalo, but i really ain't sure! the distance was too far and i couldn't zoom in much further.
while most of the fen is rather dry ( and you can walk on it ), every now and then some water is outcropping out of the ground, a great indicator that moisture is definitely seeping underneath the peatland. the future plan of the preservation management is to increase areas like this so that the fen will be able to grow again and serve as not only a habitat for rare specimen in flora & fauna but also for accumulating reasons when it comes to heat-trapping gases.
back to the stork! they are such beautiful birds!
a wooden path was installed to lead over the crop-out.
old craggly tree, about to be eaten by the fen.
i absolutely loved this scenery 😍 wouldn't this be a fantastic poster or hanged picture?
overlooking the water towards the sunlight.
yeah, i constantly returned to the stork - and the grazing cows behind it!
on the fringes of the fen was a line of old willows! they to me looked like the guardians of the reserve.
especially this dude! isn't he a fantastic figure? i do believe that in every tree there is a spirit, and while some don't always are very apparent, this one definitely couldn't keep himself hidden :)
sun shining through skeletal bushes, creating little rainbows in the air!
former water canal, now naturalized ditch.
the next few images all commemorate my love of early spring blossoms. i think they all were those of cherry plum bushes.
splendor galore 😍
cherry plums are actually edible, sometimes their fruit can be sweet, most times they seem to be sour though. i read that they're actually best used for jams! i think i'll have to remember this the next time i am encountering these shrubs in summer time when their twigs are laden with fruit!
the evening sun created wonderful little illuminating moments 😍
ghostly cherry plum bush aura!
the first tiny leaves showing!
enough with the blossom show, on to...
... wild & untidy woodlands! what you can't see well here was that they were flowed through by several ditches - turning them into a typical alluvial forest.
caught mom looking through a floating window! 😉
of course it wasn't floating at all! but it provided a nice frame into the woods!
the vippach river is only about 17 kilometers long and doesn't really get bigger than this!
the gramme after it confluenced with the vippach. the gramme is only 13 kilometers longer than the vippach, flowing later into the much bigger unstrut. the homestead behind the trees is a former mill, the grammemühle, now riding stable. i don't know much about the history of it, maybe should ask my dad if he knows anything! it's pretty far off the main surrounding villages, and i always thought it was a charming place!
two last images of the river gramme in sundown light! it was a very special atmosphere that evening, quiet and peaceful.
homeland explorations often make me realize how deeply connected i feel to it still, even if my life centers around a different region of germany now. it's nice to return to the beautiful thuringian basin and re-discover what makes it beautiful, despite some seemingly vast and desolate areas ( that are very rare - the whole basin is actually a soft-hilled and diverse landscape! ).
my heart often longs for a return at some point, especially considering that it is much less populated than the rhine main region, and life is much slower there than here. it's hard to choose, though, as my heart grew attached to two homelands over time...
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