Two chili peppers, planted in early 1999. Unfortunately I forgot to label the plants so I have to wait until they get their first fruits to tell which sort they are (I planted Habanero, Jalapeño and Cayenne this year). One Jalapeño grows in the window of my office and right now (May 1999) it has three fruits gaining ½cm per day in size.
A celkova bonsai which I purchased for 100:- Swedish crowns (about $12) in a very bad shape. It slightly recovers now.
Same bonsai from the other side.
I planted the avocado seed that became this tree about 1 ½ years ago.
This carnivore (Dionea muscipula, "Venus Fly Trap") was very hungry when I bought it some month ago. I didn't even know that these plants get flowers until it did (after being fed with some flies).
This jade tree or money tree was originally a single leaf I brought back from a trip to California in April '98. The photo shows the plant one year later.
 April 1999 |  April 2001 |
Like the one before, this jade tree or money tree was originally a single leaf I brought back from a trip to California in April '98.
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 April 1999 |  April 2001 |
This bonsai styled Ficus benjamini suffered a lot when I unforseeingly was staying three weeks in a hospital last year. When I came back home, the tree was nearly dead with only one or two leaves left. Now it still recovers from the shock (so do I). But like me it is a fighter and in quite good shape again after 3 years...
It's the same tree from the other side..
Here we have another two peppers, planted in early 1999. Now (2 weeks after the photo) they already bear fruit and obviously are Cayennes.
 April 1999 (65cm/2'2") |  April 2001 (108cm/3'6") |
No, it's not a cactus! It is an euphorbia which originated from a small branch of a bigger one that I together with a friend gave as a present to another friend. The mother plant was killed by some disease and this one too had a hard time when I left it in my apartment in Kiel before I found my new apartment in Stockholm...
 April 1999 (30cm/1') |  April 2001 (90cm/3') |
...but there is hope. This little fellow was taken from a branch from the plant above. I brought it with me when I first came to Stockholm and it survived all the time I was in hospital and now you can almost watch it grow.
This plant is called "Leuchterblume" (lamp flower because of the shape of its flowers) in German and "hjärtan på snöre" (hearts on a string - you might guess why) in Swedish. The latin name is Ceropegia woodii and it comes from southern Africa. I got it as a very little branch from an aunt and while still in Kiel it crawled over the door frame between living room and kitchen. It was slightly damaged during the transport to Sweden but now it found a new place over the living room door.
This Ficus benjamini wants to become a bonsai when it grows older....
And here we have two peppers again! By now (two weeks after the photo was taken, the right one has two small cayenne fruits while the left one doesn't stop growing.
When you plant the tiny seeds found in a maracuja you shurely won't expect such a big plant growing in less than one year. The "arms" of it - which itself hangs in my bedroom - are now approximately 1.5 meters long.
 May 1999 |  April 2001 |
And here comes the pride of my collection. Grown from seeds some years ago, two Strelitzias survived all the trouble they went through. I brought them with me to Sweden in september 1997 where they even survived my staying at the hospital for three weeks. Now they got a much bigger pot and one leaf after the other shows - will there be flowers sometime? According to sources on the net it might as well take 10-24 years until the first flowers show...
