Where is the paradis?

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To ask yourself again and again where the paradis could be. In Antwerp it is hidden and comes in strange disguises. T. came for a visit and told me, that time in this city is sticky. Maybe that's the reason that trees can grow on old buildings, abandoned buildings for years, and suddenly you have a tree on your roof.

Architectural gardens

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Some new vintage books about houseplants in the 1950ies. And an amazing book about the japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa. Kazuyo has taken on the directorship of the Architectural Biennale in Venice this year. They built the New Museum in New York City, the Glass Pavillion in Toledo, Ohio and the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne.
Even in modern Japan you see the close relationship they have between plants and buildings. Gardens are since centuries very close connected to their life at home.
Would be nice to have a hole in the roof to let grow a big tree in the apartment. The rooms are the office of Ryue Nishizawa!

From Riga via Antwerp to Africa

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A shop in Antwerp which is closed since I live here but with such a nice window. I ask myself which kind of special luggage they sold here once. I would like to look once behind this window-could be that it is still full with old stuff! Sometimes you forget, that Belgium had such a close relation to Congo-it's maybe because they want to faid out their past.
Years ago I bought on the fleamarket in Brussels 24 old filmrollboxes with the negatifs still inside. I developed them and came across an expedition to Belgish Congo in 1953-then still a colonie. Will show you later some of the fotos.

new friend 2

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This is Darwin. One of my recent ebay founds. It's the wood monkey from Kay Bojesen for Rosendahl Denmark.
Darwin hangs on a picture from a Zurich based illustrator Naomi Baldauf with a very nice papercollection.

new friend 1

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This is Boris. I found the dwarf bald-headed in a thrift store and made him a wig and beard out of fur. I think he's happy!

vintage garden books from Switzerland

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The weather is so nice here and I have plenty of time to be busy with gardening. It's getting an obsession. Here my 3 old gardenbooks from Switzerland. They are all published in the early 40ies.
First is about mushrooms, second one about flowers and plants in house and garden, and the third one about the flowers in the Alps.
Second one is interesting because you can see how the taste changed in 70 years-but I was suprised that they had a lot of succulents and cactus in the swiss villages, which were at this time for sure mostly farmers. The descriptions are simpel but effectiv, no nonsense!

Mimosa pudica

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Mimosa pudica is flowering! It last about 36 houres and then it's over. My plants are doing really well and I'm obsessed with horticulture at the moment. It seems that I have a new hobby! It's a kind of therapy for me and extremly relaxing. But I have to think about what I will do in one month when I'm away for 5 weeks!
If I would live in England I could order even more nice plants here or take course.

Escape from the city

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yesterday I went to the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. It is a huge garden with a castle, with big green houses, a lake, forests, big herbarium, a medicinal plants garden...
They are restoring the green houses, so there are not all accessible. There were not that much people so I could take photos without everybody constantly passing by. And I took some very nice photos with my new-old Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera Alpha. It's a fantastic camera! They are producing the films again.
And I took some souvenirs-of course not allowed!

Try now to cultivate:
Rhipsalis cf. crispata
Rhipsalis puniceodiscus

Aloha Kaua'i 2

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Some of the souveniers I brought from Hawaii and some I found in thrift stores in Europe! I always wanted to have a hula girl. But the taste changed, and the hula girls in Kaua'i in 2009 were not my kitsch taste anymore. So I find the hula girl here in Antwerp from a collection- I think she is from the late 70ies. The pineapple ashtray I found recently in Zurich and he is from 1962! It was very difficult to find vintage stuff in Kaua'i itself-and it was very expensive. The tablecloth is an old one and has the same colour like the soil on the island.
The coffee was fantastic, so are the spices for fish or tofu.
The palm is a very rare species I brought from Amsterdam. You nearly don't find it anymore in nature.
And the other plant I grow myself from seeds I took with me. I think it is a kind of mimosoideae, but I didn't find out which species precisely. I had also some nice frangipani but they rot in the winter and died.

Aloha Kaua'i

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Im Mai letzten Jahres bin ich mit S. von Seattle mit Alaska Airlines nach Lihu'e geflogen. Wir hatten 5 Tage um Kaua'i zu erkunden. Morgens um 7 aufgestanden, die Route bestimmt, Sonnenbrille auf und mit dem nigelnagelneuen weissen Chrysler auf die Strasse. Kaua'i ist sehr klein-kein Problem um die Insel in 5 Tagen immer vom selben Ort aus zu umrunden. Es waren unvergessliche Tage in der Natur mitten im Pazifik.
Noch immer sehe ich die Finnen der Delphine aus dem Ozean auftauchen, einer ums andere, ein ganzer Schwarm und dann die Freudensprünge der Pubertierenden. Einmal kurz die Augen schliessen, um sich von der Realität zu überzeugen. Da waren sie noch immer, sanft durchs Wasser gleitend im Gitzern der Morgensonne.
Enjoy the following posts about the least-developed major Hawaiian Island.