mühlviertel is rich in ...

... Calthae palustris!

Flora of Mühlviertel is rather boring for the most part. Well not quite, it has some highlights, even a few rare species (not many though), and also of course some which are very common there but much rarer elsewhere, like this kingcup, which are flowering now in unmeasurable numbers there - while they're rare or not even native in many places of Eastern Austria.

ice

I proclaimed spring a good week or so ago - but now winter has come back, and with force: with icy temperatures, and currently, while I am writing this, a sizeable blizzard right here in Vienna. Weather outside is not very inviting at all, so here some photos from last weekend, shot when we had a cosy minus 12 to minus 15° Celsius outside, with hardly any wind worth mentioning.

*whiter christmas*

*white christmas*

looking delicious but isn't

Some fungi you can eat, but it isn't really recommended to do so.

For a simple reason: because they don't taste half as good as they look like.
Of which kind this one here is an example.

snow for real

Last blog post only was a teaser.
Now here's real snow:

snow in the mountains!

There's finally snow in the Alps, and other higher lying regions like my native Mühlviertel (I've got news from there from first blizzards, and high time it was for them indeed).

But alas, no snow to be had here in Vienna, and other lower lying regions: we're still waiting here for winter to arrive.

veronica

Something more positive, for a change: some beautiful Veronica.

From the archives obviously.

and now for something entirely different

Virtual beer seems to be low in demand ... very well then, so be it. The riddle is solved, in case you're interested - again, just click the photo (of yesterday's post).

For today now, something completely different:

les fleurs dernières

mossy wonderland

bog

rain

Weather is like autumn and no kidding, temperatures fell below 10 degrees. Well, some regular readers of this blog might remember that I don't like summer ... but ... I didn't ever say that I prefer autumn in summer, did I? So what about some warmer weather soon then, my dear meteorologists?

mushrooms

Neither of those is delicious, the latter in fact is inedible while the former tastes like chewing gum without any taste whatsoever; but they're pretty, aren't they?

another red one

I've been away for the weekend, at a place where these grow. They're nothing very much special really but who cares? (I don't, obviously.)

hoarfrost

We might have seen the last of winter here in Vienna, in the Austrian lowlands. Where this shot was taken however, in Mühlviertel highlands, there's still plenty of winter to be had.

the happy mishpocha visiting experience

I failed to visit some of my friends and relatives on Christmas, and I managed to put them on schedule this weekend. As the saying goes it is not always pleasant to go and visit mishpocha.

But not so this weekend.

I left light-hearted and with a big smile (the photo - showing me - of course wasn't taken by me, obviously). Thank you all, dear friends, for this Happy Mishpocha Visiting Experience. I guess we should do it more often. :)

water

cross-species experience

No, not really - but rather change of species name. As I only discovered recently the bay bolete changed its name: recently known as Xerocumus badius, it is now referred to as Boletus badius.

And don't ask me about the when and the why. Probably she married some nice Boletus guy, how am I supposed to know?!

swamp

I've only re-discovered bogs again this year, and I wonder what took me so long. Here's what moorish water looks like in infrared:

And here's its colour in plain:

(Yes indeed, red. This isn't dirty water - quite the contrary, it is relatively clear.)

And this here is cotton grass, which I haven't seen since ... well, I think since more than twenty years. It is very rare and only grows in bogs and moorish places, and many of those have been drained since, only a very few remain.