I've planted some herbs today. I like to use fresh herbs for cooking, but if I buy a bunch in the supermarket it's usually too much, and the remainders will go to waste.

I've planted six different types: Genovese basil, thyme, a pepper 'hot mix', sweet basil, tomato's and parsley. I'm growing them indoors, in a sort of mini hothouse, and it will take a week or two before the first leaves start appearing. A nice thing to look forward to, somehow.

A plant in our living room is sick.

There are little things on the leaves and the leaves look wet. I'm not sure what to do about it but it doesn't look very healthy.

The plant is pretty far from the other plants and they seem to be fine but I'm worried that it might be contagious.

Is there a cure for something like this? Any recommendations?

The plant I brought home from work seems to be doing slightly better and it hasn't lost as many leaves anymore the last few days. I've placed it next to a window in the living room where it gets plenty of sunlight. I am under the (unproven) impression that the lack of unfiltered sunlight in our office was the cause of the plant's problems. We'll see.

Because of the incredibly beautiful and sunny weather I have the water our plants almost every day.

Jason, a colleague, and his wife Liza were blessed with a baby son, Gabriel Louis last week. Congratulations!

This weekend I played with some software for work, experimenting with a Java client for a C++ server. They work nicely together. I expected that, but it's always nice to see that it actually works in practice.

Some of the leaves that are about to fall off have brown spots on them. I hope it isn't a sign of a disease.

It certainly wasn't for the lack of love or attention from my co-workers, but unfortunately my new plant wasn't doing very well at my desk.

For a few weeks now it has been losing leaves, and while in the beginning I thought that the plant had to get adjusted to its new home (our office) it became clear that it was fundamentally unhappy. I think the main reason is that the windows are tinted, and not enough natural light makes it through to the plant.

So today after work I placed it in the car and drove it home. We still have to decide where we'll place it, but I hope it will do better here.

Wednesday evening I went to the mall to prepare for Christmas and my trip to Bulgaria. I stayed till late, and went I got home at 11.00 pm I took out the Christmas tree.

There is of course no point in having the tree slowly loose its needles on the carpet when there's nobody to enjoy it, so I wrapped the tree in a special anti-needle bag and took it out... It's a little bit sad, but I'm happy we have had a nice tree in the house since after Thanksgiving.

And of course, I still have my tree at work.

Wrapping up the tree...

...gone!

I still have my tree at work in my cubicle.

As promised, here is a picture of our Christmas tree with its decorations.

We may put a few more things in over the next few days, but it's great to have a Christmas tree in the house.

I am really concerned about the last cutting of the Starfish.

A week ago it still looked healthy, but I am afraid it's not doing well at all.

It looks like only one of the cuttings of our starfish will survive.

After a week in the Netherlands we had to throw two completely dead cuttings, and the third one, which I placed in a pot will follow soon.

I still have hope for number four -- it doesn't look extremely strong but at least it seems not to be affected by the disease that killed the rest of the plant.

Tonight Sasha and I went for dinner in The Symposium, a restaurant in downtown Durham.

Last night, after we went our for dinner and a beer with Sasha's colleagues, we saw that the Starfish flower cuttings are not doing very well.

Three out of four have light spots on the stem, a symptom of the disease that affected the original plant.

The largest cutting in water clearly shows the dark spots on the roots. I still have some hope for the fourth cutting though, it seems still healthy and I'm glad I placed them in separate pots.

The four cuttings on the window-sill in the living room. Three out of four don't look too good.

The largest cutting in water clearly shows the dark spots that were affecting the original plant.

I still have hope for the fourth cutting. It's the smallest of the 4, but it still looks healthy.

It's a bit awkward that the title of this article is "tropical plant", but the fact is that I don't know the name of the plant that we bought. On the label it says "assorted tropical", so that's not much help either.

Anyway, after a week of it getting used to our apartment I've put it in a bigger pot.

Before.

After.