latecomer

lobau

wattebauschbilder

The title translates as 'cotton ball photos', and that's what those are.

parasites astray

Cuscuta europaea isn't supposed to use a grass like Bromus sterilis as a host, but still it does. Serves it right, it'll get punished through self-punishment: the parasite will kill the grass long before it could open flower, let alone produce fruit; and a parasite killing its host is nothing but a silly parasite.

back in lobau again

This year's inflorescence and last year's fruit!

just so photo

Well, it's just nice, isn't it? Nothing special whatsoever, just nice to look at.

last year's bushfire

Those who haven't seen the place last year wouldn't notice that there has been a bushfire - if it weren't for the scorched tree trunks and burnt bushes.
Here's how the place looks now, in the spring after the fire. Much has been destroyed, but fortunately still plenty of plants survived, orchids too of course - even though not on this place.

lobau spring

scheiterhaufen - heap of logs

I've had guests for Easter where I served an Austrian speciality, plain-and-simple Scheiterhaufen, which nevertheless was such a success that I feel obligated to publish the recipy which I got from my dear niece Silvia.

So here it is, the recipe:
Scheiterhaufen - (literally:) Heap of Logs:
(In Austria the cooking measure is dekagram rather than gram, to which I'll stick here for authenticity. ;-)
Ingredients for cake mixture (4 helpings):
6 (old) buns, or old bread of any kind (white bread according to the original recipe, which of course also includes baguettes and the like, but you can try with black bread too)
3 eggs
3/8 litres milk
5 dekagrams sugar
Ingredients for the filling:
5 dekagrams margarine
7 dekagrams powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 pack vanilla sugar
juice of 1 lemon
25 dekagrams = 1 pack (Austrian measures) of curd cheese (= cottage cheese = farmer's cheese = quark)
5 dekagrams raisins
Preparation:
Cut the buns in handsome pieces (about a centimetre thick). Brush your baking dish with some margarine, put one layer of bun pieces in it.
Mix the 3 eggs, 3/8 l milk and 5 dekagrams sugar = the cake mixture, and put some of it on the first layer of buns - but keep some for the next layer(s)!
Prepare filling: separate yolk from the 2 eggs and mix yolk and other filling ingredients; mix the egg white in a separate bowl till it is creamy and then mix with the rest of the filling mass.
Put a layer of filling on the layer of bun pieces - keep some of it if you intend to build several layers; if you only want 2 of them you put in all of it.
After that put a second layer of bun pieces on the filling, again pour some of the cake mixture on it - and keep some if you want to build a third layer.
You can build 3 layers of buns, or 5 if you like; I wouldn't recommend more than five though (I've built one with 3 layers on my Easter weekend). The upper layer should be buns, but you may also try with a filling layer as upper layer (I haven't).
Cooking:
With 200 ° Celsius in the oven, don't ask me which programme, I used the one with top and bottom heat plus cooking fan (so the whole programme), and it did work. Scent will tell when it is ready (but you also could check colour of the top layer of buns).
Serve it warm with powdered sugar (you can also leave out the sugar if it is sweet enough for your taste already).

Oh - and the photo is one Anacamptis morio; the first orchid of this year's season.

three of a kind

But three different ones! Three different viola species:

lobau

back to lobau!

mud season

Temperatures rose to a tropical +5° Celsius, even ten when these photos were taken. I hardly could bear my gloves when I rode along there, in this mud and dirt (of which my bicycle - and my shoes too! - picked up more than a fair share).

ice!

lobau by night

winter!!

I didn't really expect anymore that we'll get some winter in the lowlands: there wasn't any snow worth mentioning so far in Lobau, nor was there any ice except an extremely thick layer which couldn't even withstand a sparrow's weight - and nor was there any more today, not really, only that there was enough snow (just!!) to make a white appearance, if you didn't look too closely.

So no real winter but only a reflected splendour, and now that we've got mid-january already, and weather forecast doesn't really predict much more of it, I don't expect that we will get the real thing at all, in the un-winter of 2011/12 - not here in the lowlands. Thank you very much, climate change, you've finally managed to produce a winterless winter.

lobau

I wish I were in Lobau - this photo is from last weekend only:

But to-day there was a warm, sunshiny early spring day - and I had to work. Most likely snowdrops already have begun to flower; but if they haven't yet then they'll postpone it still, at least for some days: very bad weather is forecast for the weekend, probably with some snow even, here in the lowlands.

mushrooming in january

old growth

Oh nothing, I'm just feeling like if I were old: ancient, in fact.

greener grismas even