Brigitte’s autumn hideaway

Archive for the ‘Autumn’ Category

We have a lot of rain at the moment… since 3 weeks to be exactly… but that can’t stop our kids from playing outside…

… they have a lot of fun in the sand pit…

… and even use the hose to make a waterfall!

Today we had a few moments of sun and a beautiful rainbow showed it’s lovely colours over our place.

David and Aileen went to a mushroom hunt in our ‘wild corner’

There are a lot fungi on tree stomps…

… but also on the ground like this orange cuties around my yarrow

The biggest surprise today was this little patch of mushrooms I first thought might be puff balls…

… but look at this!
This are lovely white buds (Champignon in German and Agaricus bisporus in Latin) growing in our little forest!
Yum! What a great lunch!

You might remember my post about the Emperor gum moth not long ago (click here if interested)

Yesterday when Christoph was outside working, something fall onto his head and when he looked around he saw it was a huge caterpillar of the Emperor gum moth

He brought her inside…

… and we gave her into the jar were we already keep 2 cocoons of the same family.

She was quite acrobatic by checking out the whole jar…

… and she even looked out of the top!

But then she found a place she liked. We gave her some Eucalyptus into the jar just to be sure she had something to munch.

Then at night she started to make silky threads!
Unfortunately it was so late and we couldn’t watch (it takes her 8 hours to complete her cocoon)

So in the morning she had finished her work and now we have three cocoons

I wonder when they will be transformed since this special caterpillars can stay in their cocoons for months to many years…

To say from the size of the cocoons we have two females and one male which is a bit smaller then the others.

Autumn brings so many yummy gifts for the people.
Say onion weed (Allium triquetum) which is one of my favorites is not only growing in spring, no it is also growing now and can be added wherever you use chive or spring onions.

Try my ‘Mac & cheese & onionweeds’ (click here for the recipe)

Another gift are acorns!

Oh I just love acorn coffee which is so good for building bones!
Here is a post where you can see how to prepare acorns so they are edible.

Acorns can be used like nuts in cakes and if you are adventures, why nut try my yummy ‘Acorn cake’
Yummy!

Autumn is my favorite season and I guess it’s also David’s because he is not only climbing trees in the forest…

…he is also searching for his beloved mushrooms which are popping out of the ground

The bushes are loaded with berries like this Mahoe (which are not edible as far as I know)…

… and we enjoy to collect blackberries and other delicate autumn gifts.
Please click here for some autumn pictures and have fun!

Our garden is still blooming and that’s how we found out the name of our mystery plant!

It is called ‘Ginger Lily’ in Australia and  here you can see some pictures of the flower in bloom.
One mystery solved and another arose when we found this plant.

We have no idea what it is and are waiting for her to bloom.
She is in the end of a section were we build our new garden beds.
The sun doesn’t shine in the veggie garden anymore since she is traveling in a lower arch.

Christoph chopped down some trees and now we will make five raised beds.
It is a section were the sun shines the whole day (especially without the cut trees

There is a lot of live around our house and we enjoyed to see this huge female stick insect!

We gave it onto the black currant bush so nobody would accidentally stand on it.

Since we planted our swan plant we also had a visit from a female Monarch butterfly…

… and as you can see she was busy