Palatine Wood Gnome
There are many that spread over a much larger territory; that host a wider range of peculiar plants or give shelter to much more interesting wildlife species.
But the Palatine Forest is the largest coherent wood in Germany and, most of all: It's my home.
Why "Wood Gnome"?
Well, I have been named thus because I turn into Rumpelstiltskin kind of regularly when "visitors" come over from the other side of the Rhine Plains (where they have lots of forest as well...) with their huge cars, jamming the streets of my village, drive up to a forester's lodge, have lunch there, return home after a final cup of coffee and then claim "Oh, we have been to the WOODS this weekend"
That's why.
Autumn Colours
What an amazing ..... well, what is it? A Tractor Cabrio? Made some heads turn around for sure and looks like real fun.
Regent to the left, Silvaner to the right (grapes, that is).
No more hand picking, these giant machines to all the hard work these days. They are enormous, and so loud! The vines are shaken and the grapes fall on a conveyer belt that carries them on to a trailer.
Given the special climate in our area, sweet chestnuts grow here by the thousands. Like many other things, the Romans brought them here and apart from me and the other hundreds of people that plough up the grounds in search of the biggest and sweetest chestnuts every September/October, the wild boars are eternally thankful, too.
Goes without saying. We used to turn those into itching powder when I was a kid.
It's an amazing sight when the grape leaves start to change their colour, depending on the variety from a light yellow to a deep red. The village here is Leistadt, beautifully situated at the corner of the forest, overlooking the vinyards down to the Rhine plains.
Kallstadt; in the distance Herxheim am Berg. We have cosy wine village like these by the dozen.
Part of the old outer fortification walls of our Wachenheim castle. I lived just 150m downhill to the right.
What an amazing ..... well, what is it? A Tractor Cabrio? Made some heads turn around for sure and looks like real fun.
Regent to the left, Silvaner to the right (grapes, that is).
No more hand picking, these giant machines to all the hard work these days. They are enormous, and so loud! The vines are shaken and the grapes fall on a conveyer belt that carries them on to a trailer.
Given the special climate in our area, sweet chestnuts grow here by the thousands. Like many other things, the Romans brought them here and apart from me and the other hundreds of people that plough up the grounds in search of the biggest and sweetest chestnuts every September/October, the wild boars are eternally thankful, too.
Goes without saying. We used to turn those into itching powder when I was a kid.
It's an amazing sight when the grape leaves start to change their colour, depending on the variety from a light yellow to a deep red. The village here is Leistadt, beautifully situated at the corner of the forest, overlooking the vinyards down to the Rhine plains.
Kallstadt; in the distance Herxheim am Berg. We have cosy wine village like these by the dozen.
Part of the old outer fortification walls of our Wachenheim castle. I lived just 150m downhill to the right.
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