A father told his daughter that Autumn arrives without any whistles and bell, Unlike the other seasons. The slush of spring. You can feel the heat of summer. The bite of winter air. But today when we went picking mushrooms in the forest, I realized that autumn never arrives silently. Pale amber sunlight doesn’t left you grumpy, falls across sparkling September trees. Autumn sounds like a sad tune. Days will be shortened, tree begins to drop its leaves. The leaves give their last breath through their stomata. I can feel the smell of the foraging season: chestnuts, mushrooms, wild herbs… The smell of old summer. After every sunset, the ground cools down fast. Together with the heat in the air it traps the old scents in between. And now summer’s loss seems a bit more bearable. Autumn the season I love the most. There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set. Just like that, Autumn Falls. The first thing we do is go picking mushrooms. It’s a long-standing tradition in Germany. Germans eat more mushrooms than any other European country. Tall mushrooms, short mushrooms. They can be as red as the sun or as blue as the summer sky. In Central Europe there are only about 60 types of edible mushrooms. The poisonous mushrooms are everywhere, very easy to be mistaken. Don’t underestimate this danger! There are many deaths each year due to poisonous mushrooms After years of picking mushrooms, reading books, learning from experienced people I still have so much to learn. Prime locations are kept privately within families. We’re lucky that we got insider tips by experts and had access to a beautiful forest of porcini mushrooms. Remember not to forage too much to avoid destroying the whole ecology of that location. Press the soil firmly back after picking. I also went picking some edible wild herbs, to invite some close friends over for dinner. Buckhorn, stinging nettle, ashweed, Sorrel, mustard-garlic, water parsley… Central European forests are full of edible wild herbs They are delicious and more nutritious than the grown ones because of the harsh climate conditions in the wild. Living in a foreign country is sometimes not so easy. Parents are far away and friends are not easy to meet. After graduation everyone moved to different cities to work. Sometimes we can only meet once a year. It’s not that you can just pick up the phone and have a drink the other day like the life back then.. But I think I’m lucky to have some good friends nearby, although they live one hour drive from us, we always manage to have time to meet regularly. Does autumn’s arrival make people more emotional?
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