Guus Bosman

On Sunday I tried to revive the ill plant I bought last week. More than half of the plant was affected by an illness of some kind.

I took the plant of out of its pot. Some of the stems were dead, and a few more had large black spots on the part between roots and stem. Perhaps it was some sort of fungus. I threw away the stems that were visibly affected, and placed the healthy parts into separate pots. I felt a bit like a plant surgeon.

I hope that, by placing the cuttings in separate pots, at least one will get to survive. I've placed them on the window-sill where they'll get plenty of sunlight.

This weekend we bought a few plants for in the living room. We went to Lowe's, a hardware store with a garden center and we got three large plants and two small ones.

I was very happy to see a Starfish flower, the same cactus that my grandmother gave me four years ago. It was the last of this type they had in store, and it's in pretty bad shape.

I still bought the cactus. It's a nice challenge to see if I can get this plant back into shape or if it will die within a few weeks. Currently it's on the bar, and I'll leave it alone for a few days so it can adjust to the temperature in our house.

Yesterday we bought our first new plant in Durham.

Unfortunately we had to leave two plants in Arlington, but they were quickly adopted by other people on our floor in the week before we left.

This plant I saw the other day at Kroger, and it's a type that we used to have in Haarlem as well. It's dense, compact and has a nice light green color.

Yesterday evening we went out in Durham, in a bar called Satisfaction. Around 10.00 pm they started a karaoke session, which was surprisingly very entertaining. I did not get on stage (a next time) but we song for many hours. A fun evening, we were home around 2.00 am.

When we left to the U.S., many friends and family members offered help in moving house, arranging things storing our belongings, which made leaving a lot less stressfull than it would have been without their help.

One of the thing I'm especially grateful for was the fact that all our plants from the Hooimarkt found a nice new home. They are now in many cities in Holland: Leeuwarden, Leiden, Amsterdam and Alkmaar, as well as in Middenmeer.

The other day I received this nice picture from Jerry and Marjolein, showing that the plants are doing fine.

The other day I got a present from Tibor and Janneke: a small funny plant called Split Rock. It looks like a green stone, its latin name is Pleiospilos Nelii.

I left it on my desk this weekend, and this morning I saw a small flower has grown.

Because I don't like winter I'm always optimistic about the coming of the spring.

Our plants seem to share this optimism.

This winter we'll take care of somebody's plants. They'll go abroad for a couple of months and they left 4 big plants in the halway. It's nice to have so much green in the house.

Today's is the last day before my test.

Oma and Paula just left.

I was reading my book on the couch (on rooted bisimulational convergence), when somebody called. The moment I hang up the phone I looked out of the window, and guess what I saw... the cactus is blooming! It's very beautiful, click here for a big picture.