foxglove woods.
june is very much foxglove season over here in the taunus mountains, covering many forest grounds with their beautiful pink flowers. but caution has to preside over enjoying them, they are highly toxic plants! touching might not do much at all, but eating even 2 or three of the blossoms might end up deadly. the whole plant is not to be trifled with. however, it is used medicinally for cardiac insufficiencies and is actually said to be helping with basically jump starting the heart again. quite a fascinating plant, really! it's also a protandric plant, which means that the male anthers are there earlier than the female carpels. it's a weird concept, really, but it basically means that the plant is sort of hermaphroditic. the blossoms that you see and that start blooming upwards are the female carpels and on the very top are the male anthers that will bloom last. that seems to ensure that the plant isn't cross-pollinated differently, and only bumblebees will visit it.
in this post you'll see a whole lot of foxgloves and perhaps you'll be sick of them at the end. their beauty is always rather intriguing to me, as is their toxicity.
it's a contrast that i can feel in myself, too, though the toxicity sometimes gains the upper hand and will lead inevitably to destruction. the whole concept of dichotomy is something i keep grappling with, how one thing can be good but at the same time be terribly monstrous. i have deep troubles coming to terms with that for my own self, not being able to reconcile that we as human beings contain multitudes, and how i can be full of rest and contentment in one moment, but turn to being spiteful and vile the very next. maybe that is a sign that i am unwell and not neurotypical perhaps and should seek therapy. lately i have been feeling this huge divide in myself, like i am tearing myself apart into multiple directions. the ability to think about every little thing in minute detail and to understand other perspectives makes it harder for me to come to conclusions for my own wellbeing and instead often catapults me into a spiral of self-loathing and disrespect towards my own needs. of which i sometimes am even unsure of, if i actually do have needs. sometimes i think my only need in life is to be on my own, enjoying solitude, not engaging in drama. and then come moments in which i think i can't go on forever like this, i need togetherness, connection and strong emotions. but i also know that all of this eventually will wear me out again, will drain what i gathered in solitude. or perhaps solitude destroyed the enjoyment of being human for me. sometimes i really can't tell anymore. it makes me want to not be a burden to anyone, including loved ones, so for me, the option is too often to retreat, to go into hiding, to shell myself in again and only occasionally peek through the thick curtains that i put up.
i really don't know what to make of it. make of myself. who am i in all of this existence? sometimes i'd rather not be aware of myself and just exist without knowing i exist. i wonder if plants know they exist and are conscious of their purpose. i wonder if the same rings true for animals. i often crave for their way of existence, because i don't think they ever feel as consciously troubled about the self as i do. they just follow the rules of life, rotating from one cycle to the next.
i believe this a type of spurge - another highly toxic plant. the sap can cause irriations on your skin.
loved this assortment of meadow flowers and the bluebells popping out of it! they are pretty harmless as well, their blue bells can be often found in salads, too.
continuing the wild meadow mix! the pink flowers are greater knapweed - a herb often used in creams for wound-healing or as a component for moisturizers.
i was so in love with this forest meadow so fully abloom with starwort and all these other plants ❤
another spurge variety, here i am 100 percent sure it is the cypress spurge. the older they get the more red their bracts.
i remember it being quite fun to photograph this meadowland.
found a meadow grasshopper as well!
it jumped into higher grass and then was barely visible!
such a cutie, right?
i am planning this year to try myself more in macro photography, so perhaps i'll have the chance to document these critters more up close? i ordered some automatic macro rings today, hoping the'll be a pretty good alternative for the expensive macro lens that i would have to get otherwise.
it looked quite old, but i learned that his construction was actually built in 1967 when wiesbaden planned a 'forest freeway'. it was supposed to give cyclists their own lane in the woods where they wouldn't have to cross walkers and hikers. it's a little weird to me, though, because you couldn't really make out the pathway for the bikers anymore ( they were supposed to use the lane overhead ). it's also curious that behind it, the pathway for hikers basically gets stopped dead, because it ends in the pit of the former stone quarry.
in the pit of the quarry. unfortunately couldn't find any info on this quarry.
i'd say they quarried taunusquarzit here, but schist is also a very common bedrock here, so maybe even that. it does look like quartzite, though.
someone stuck a twig inside this iron boltening, for whatever reason...
saying goodbye to this little enigmatical place.
waving the foxgloves in passing!
the parcel of land that i decided to roam around in that day is commonly known as the kesselbachtal. the kesselbach is one of many little creeks in wiesbaden that inform the city's macrochore.
there are some artifically built fish ponds in the valley that use the waters of the kesselbach, but i doubt you can catch some big fish here. when i was there in june '20, i was witness of a totally different spectacle, though, which i will tell you about in a few images time.
first needed to record some of the blooming water lilies.
i wanted to get nearer to the shores of the pond, but i could notice pretty early on that there was a lot of lively movement happening down there. hundreds of little baby frogs were conquering the lands surrounding the ponds and i had to be really careful to not step on these little guys! i have, to this day, never seen such a huge amount of freshly metamorphized baby frogs!
they all were incredibly tiny, maybe 1 or 2 cms tall!
i loved their little thin legs and still very visible pollywog tail ❤
i had to pick up a baby and say hi! the cuteness was almost too much for me ❤
this was the biggest cluster of them that i was able to take photos of, but they were teeming around on every inch of the ponds shores.
i counted myself incredibly lucky to see this frog phenomenon up close! they probably all saw landside the very first time in their life that day!
sitting there and watching the frog litter explore their biotope i noticed more and more how sweet the pond lilies looked.
it was such a magical scenery, really!
unfortunately a little bit further away from the ponds you could find some rather not so nice looking structures, that seem to belong to the whole pond system, though. seems like the kesselbach is being run through this to flow into the next pond.
more hidden mysterious concrete construction.
the next pond was surrounded more by trees and felt sort of jungle-like, weren't it for the monk outlet right in the middle of it.
i enjoyed all the greenery everywhere and it was all pretty undisturbed, really, only occasionally there were some bikers or hikers coming around the corner.
perfection.
as it was a summer solstice day, i took my time and explored the forest in the kesselbach valley even further, always accompanied by the foxgloves.
i can totally see a fox putting its paws into the blossom, can you? it would look freaking cute wearing these as gloves.
all the foxglove landscapes were so delightful!
they were just everywhere!
such pink splendor!
they were even on the top of the bleidenstadter kopf hill.
always love stumbling upon scenic raised seats!
i hung out there for a while before making my way back to the car.
if there weren't trees in the way you could see the old fischzucht restaurant.
never getting over twigs and branches and roots, ever. paired with foxgloves even more so!
i think these meadows are called 'müller's wiese'. loved how the crops were showing off that special kind of early summer green when everything still feels fresh and moist and juicy.
yarrow blossoms made it into my little herb bag on that walk, to use in teas for. i love this herb so much, it's said to be good for menstruational cramps, and also has antibacterial properties.
finishing the walk at the 'villa im tal' - a hidden restaurant that serves quite some haute cuisine things! i never ate here before, because i think it's pretty darn expensive, but the food still looks and sounds delicious! i'd still say, though, that it's one of the more ritz-y forest restaurants around wiesbaden.
also, a tiny reminder of super covid high times, with instructions on how to enter and behave on the premises. wow, feels like a lifetime ago!
hope y'all enjoyed the summer woods of wiesbaden a little bit!
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