Sunday 13 December 2009

Advent


Osage Oranges
Christian L.Einwaller Ateliers
Palais Harrach

All Wrapped Up
White and Green
Palais Kinsky

White Christmas Tree
Palais Kinsky
At least, I think:
There are so many palaces along Freyung
and Herrengasse, where you can walk
from courtyard to courtyard,
I still get confused.


The Sweetest Of Them All
Gingerbread House
at
K.u. K Hofzuckerbäcker
Demel Royal and Imperial Confectioners
CH. DEMEL' S SÖHNE GmbH
Kohlmarkt 14
Where else?

*

Heap on the wood!
The wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
Sir Walter Scott

*

Images
© by Merisi

21 comments:

  1. Osage oranges.....I've never seen those before. Do they have an aroma? What a lovely color of green though. I like it with white and white lights at Christmas. Wishing I was in your town, enjoying the sights and sounds of the holiday.
    Warm hugs,
    ~Allie

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  2. Oh, what a precious little gingerbread house! ... and I can't imagine being able to walk from palace to palace. What a wonderful place you live, Merisi. I'm so glad to visit it all the way from Mississippi.

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  3. I've never seen Osage Oranges before... so green...
    Love the gingerbread house!

    Happy Holidays to you and to your Family, dear Merisi!

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  4. I hadn't realized it had been awhile since I visited you. Osage Oranges, what do you do with them? When I lived in Kansas (USA) they grew there and I never knew what to do with them. We would slice them, dry them, and make dried flowers with them. But what else?

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  5. I just love that white tree.

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  6. Allie,
    Osage oranges are so rare here, it took me four years to meet somebody who knew them. Infact, this is only the third time in four years that I spotted some. They do grow near the Austrian border, in Hungary, apparently.

    I know them well from my former home. A little outside Washington, along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and near Poolsville, Maryland, they grow along the road. One particularly beautiful stretch of road is along Persimmon Tree Road in Bethesda, Maryland. This was horse country in the good old days (which I remember!). Just that stretch near Cabin John, driving towards Potomac, once upon a time there was a farm with big rolling hills, now tract mansion filled "Avanel". Some good souls saved about half a mile of the original Persimmon Tree Road, by chaining themselves to the beautiful old cedar trees lining the road, and between these cedar trees there grow still plenty of osage orange trees. They look like very tall bushes, with spiny branches, crawling underneath them inevitably tears your clothes. In late fall, driving along there in the early morning, an abundance of those bright green fruits would not only line the roadside, but have fallen also on the road itself. Later in the day, those poor oranges that had fallen onto the road would be squashed to smithereens by the cars, but in the early morning sun it was always a sight to behold.

    Near historic Williamsburg, many of the parking areas are lined by osage bushes. There they don't grow as tall apparently, but the fruits are even larger. Simply wonderful.

    I used to collect them in a reed basket and put them outside the entrance of our house, which was bordering original woods with the tallest trees imaginable. Those oranges would last almost until Christmas, then they would start to shrivel and exude a smell of rotting wood. I carried many a basket of the overripe fruit into the woods. Who knows, somewhere out there, an osage orange bush may be growing now!

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  7. I have never seen osage oranges before, too. the skin and colour are too different... i wondered its inner part.. is it similar with oranges we know?

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  8. I seem to have been away from blogland for ages but there you all are.
    Totally brilliant pictures, each with an unusual yet perfect slant on the Season. Green and gold, lovely.

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  9. Another beautiful post. Thank you for sharing all of them. I love Advent -- even though I'm not a Christian. I also love osage oranges. We had them in Cincinnati...but I do recall the terrible smell at the end of the season.

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  10. I have an Osage orange that I grew from seed. It towers over me now and in the fall was covered with the little orange fruits. They have a pleasant smell at first, that is said to repel fleas, so I always have a bowl inside -- until the smell changes.

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  11. Like everyone else, I'm fascinated by your picture of the Osage oranges. They're MORE pleasing for being irregular in shape, not perfectly sweet--the picture lets me feel their texture, inhale their scent, anbd marvel at that freshest green. Wonderful.

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  12. I've always heard that Osage Oranges are poisonous. Here we call 'em horse apples. I don't know if that's true or not. I should look it up.

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  13. I'm like the majority of the commenters too. Never heard of this type of orange. Its a fascinating color and texture.
    I have fallen in love with that gingerbread house. Its so cute with Santa leaning out the window. A great series, as always.
    Have a good week Merisi.
    Sue

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  14. What beautifull Christmassy pictures!

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  15. beautiful visions of christmas...

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  16. Liebe Merisi!
    Ich gehe jetzt in deinen wunderschönen Bildern Adventstimmung tanken. Ich hatte soviel zu tun in den letzten Tagen, dass diese wunderschöne Zeit ein wenig an mir vorbeigegangen ist.
    Meine Organisation ist gleich Null. Ich gelobe aber Besserung :)
    Schön, dass du die Osage Oranges auch beim Einwaller gefunden hast :D

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  17. Osage Oranges are news to me.

    Lovely photos of the season, Merisi.

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  18. vonderbar!
    Love the gingerbread haus!!
    danke

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  19. Thank you Charles Gramlich. I knew I had seen those before and they weren't called Osage Oranges. Horse apples, that's what we called them in Northern Illinois.

    I love the running theme of green in this post.

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  20. Charles and Alan,
    I had never heard that Osage oranges were called "Horse apples", thank you! Here in Vienna, horse apples are something to be kept off the street; The Fiaker horses wear diapers! ;)

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