Guus Bosman

Nadya helped us in the yard this weekend. One of the things she did was pruning our roses. They are mature roses but hadn't been pruned in many years so it was time to cut them back drastically. Nadya has a lot of experience with roses.

It's nice to make progress on the yard. There are many more small projects we want to do but slowly but surely it's truly becoming "our yard".

Our front-yard had a few patches where there wasn't much grass. The yard closest to the house doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight.

I bought a "lawn repair kit", which is a mixture of grass seeds and fertilizer, mixed through paper pulp. It looks a little weird, but now a week later there are tiny sprouts of grass showing, so it seems to work.

It is nice to work on the yard, and take care of things like this.

We worked in the backyard yesterday. The weather was excellent and we bought several flowers and planters for our deck. It was a lot of fun and it looks nice. Now we'll have to keep everything alive.

There is an empty patch of land in the middle of our yard. Last year the previous owners put a few small pansies, but the space is too big and deserve a nice bush. So we're looking into what to put there. Maybe roses, or hydrangeas.

This was also the first weekend we use our umbrella -- it's getting very sunny already.

Last weekend was the start of the Christmas season: we bought a tree and spend a lovely afternoon singing Christmas songs at friends.

On Sunday afternoon we went to Bill & Ingrid who organize a sing-in ever year. Accompanied by a great piano player we sang various Christmas songs, traditional, religious and others. It was an enthusiastic group and we had a lot of fun. We brought pepernoten.

In the evening we decorated the tree. It was a little on the large side -- I had to cut it down -- but we managed to get it in the house. Nora put a snowman decoration in the tree.

We decorated our Christmas tree tonight.

On Wednesday I made a round-trip to North Carolina to pick up our house plants.

I left DC at 8.30 am and just after lunch I dropped off my laptop at my old work. It was nice to say hello there, and we had coffee together. Then I drove to Esteban's house in Durham; it was great to catch up. Our plants had stayed there for a week (thank you guys!).

Around 4.00 pm I left again, with the car full of our plants. There were eight plants in total, three small ones and five large. They filled the entire car and I couldn't use the rear view mirror on the way home.

The plants survived the four hour journey pretty well, except for a few branches that were exposed to the sun at the rear window and got too hot and burned. The last two hours I put the air conditioning very cold, and I think that helped.

The plants are now in our home again, and they cheer up the apartment.

Yesterday evening I took down our Christmas tree.

We decorated the tree six weeks ago and it is still in amazingly good shape; hardly any needles came off when I took it outside.

In the afternoon I visited Petra and Ron for a nice cup of coffee.

Our Christmas tree this year.

We still have no top yet... next year!

Today we decorated our Christmas tree. We're not completely done yet because we don't have the small hangers for the balls, but we've put the lights and the garlands.

I'm very happy that we have a tree; it's the first time since 2006. It's been a long time since we celebrated Christmas at home (last year we were in Somerset) and I really enjoyed going out and buying a tree.

Friday night we went to Macy's and we bought two new ornaments, including a kabouter!

More pictures when we have the balls and other ornaments in the tree.

The plant that I had at work for a while but then brought home, was sick 18 months years ago, but it doing much better now. The other day we noticed it is budding a completely new branch.

Yesterday afternoon I helped someone move house.