Today the beautiful garden at country estate Jagtlust in 's-Graveland was the backdrop to my public lecture about sustainable vegetable gardening inspired by historical gardening manuals. A perfect combination of the Hilversum Sustainability Days and the History Month, topically themed 'Natural'.

Linnaeus day 3! Yesterday I did not want to wait in line for the Linnaeus house in the city center, so I came back today. Nice to see so many objects from Linnaeus' original inventory, as well as some nice portraits and other works of art.

Linnaeus day 2. Today is Kulturnatten in Uppsala so there is a lot of music, theatre, art and food throughout the city. The Linnaeus garden offered besides the regular exhibition a very nice tour (in English) and a theatre show starring Linnaeus himself (200% Swedish).

Today I literally stepped into the footsteps of Carolus Linnaeus through the Danmarksvandring, the reconstructed path Linnaeus took with his students from Uppsala to his outer house Hammarby. Some concrete traces remain, such as trees he planted, his 'lecture horse' and of course the house itself.

Two years ago I visited the old center of Kiruna. It was a strange experience to walk through a city that was half empty. Just around the corner were the mines that are causing the slow but sure collapse of Kiruna. Today, the church is slowly but surely moved to a safer location.

Greatly enjoyed the Unearthed exhibition last Thursday in the @britishlibrary.bsky.social. It was such a perfect ending to my visit to England for the @people-plants-2025.bsky.social conference. I was not aware of the exhibition until the last moment, so luckily I could squeeze in a visit!

And moving to the final paper of this panel, ‘Gardening as Knowledge Practice: Historical Handbooks for Kitchen Gardens’ by Sanne Steen 🪏🪴📚 #plantsandpeople

Registration is now OPEN for our conference 'Plants and People'! Please sign up for attendance and workshops through our website: sites.google.com/view/plants-... Thanks to @sshmedicine.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social & the Material Culture Forum for their generous assistance.

Vanochtend heb ik al wandelend met een groepje Hilversummers het Winterkoninkje leren herkennen. Met het typische staartje omhoog. In de middag reisde ik naar Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden voor de tentoonstelling "Floris Verster, Thuis in het groen". En wat herken ik daar? Juist, ja! Trrrrr!

Today I striked against the budget cuts in Dutch higher education. What an amazing experience to be among so many Rotterdam colleagues with one message: stop the cuts! Afterwards I went to the Erasmus statue to talk to people about Erasmus, activism and enactivism.

I was nominated as Best PhD colleague for Erasmus Graduate School for Social Sciences and the Humanities. Feeling very honoured!

While I am employed in Rotterdam, I am currently a fellow at the Allard Pierson, working with the UvA special collections. Therefore, I decided to join part of today's strike in Amsterdam. I am inspired for "our" strike in Rotterdam on 8 April! Let's continue the relay strike against budget cuts!

"Onze tuin" is een tuinier boek uit het begin van de twintigste eeuw. Dit boek geeft allerlei praktische informatie over het aanleggen en onderhouden van een sier- en moestuin. Met handige afbeeldingen en tabellen kan vrijwel iedereen hiermee uit de voeten. #boekenweek

This eighteenth-century design for a large garden for leisure and food production shows that the romantic, landscape-style started to be applied in gardens but were not deemed suitable for vegetable gardens, which instead had to be easy to oversee.

How many gardening tools to you have? Or even recognize? Illustration from Den Neerstigen Bieën-houder.

I'm chronologically working my way through Dutch gardening books. This week I entered the second half of the eighteenth century and life became much easier, because authors are now taking up Linnaeus' naming of plants, which we still generally use today, such as this tulp tree or Liriodendrum.

Combining research of historical garden books with actual gardening is fun. Yesterday, I harvested a massive parsnip and today I'm reading a seventeenth-century description of the white carrot.

Eighteenth-century recognition of climate change: nature, strengthened by the arts, has helped us producing sweeter fruits in the Netherlands. If only they knew what was to come...

As every gardener, I am always looking out for natural remedies against snails eating my plants. The seventeenth century is not always the best place to learn environmentally friendly solutions, but inviting birds to eat your snails seems just right!

Just found a personalized design for my future garden, bearing my initials.

I'm spending February and March in the Allard Pierson reading room to learn who cultivated vegetables and why. These weeks I look into Dutch seventeenth-century books but I aim to proceed untill WWII. I'm really grateful for Louise O. Fresco for funding this fellowship! Stay tuned for fun findings.

I think it is amazing how the dark brown pen made light brown pen completely undreadable without spoiling too much ink. But I also think it is annoying. Mostly annoying.

Unfortunately, no sign of any golden helmets. Nonetheless I do recommend the NS walk from Assen trainstation.

Starting a new language journey...

There we go again...

Oops I think I just impulsively ordered four books.

Today, I visited the Uppsala University museum: Gustavianum. Besides the fabulous anatomical theatre, the art collection and the wonderful scientific objects, the museum also shows the lifes of students throughout the history of the university. What they dressed like, and how they were inaugurated.

Reminder, this will start now! See the link for the zoom link to join online.

Last week I baked my own Swedish cinnamon bun - with cardamom in the dough (Kardamummabollar are a bit too intense for me) and today I learnt about the cultivation of the cardamom tree in De Koninglycke Hovenier (Amsterdam 1676), brought to Sweden by Charles De Geer in the 18th cen.

After building a Snow Cat I sat on a bench for lunch, and this Hair Cat showed up and jumped on my lap! Now I can stand missing my own cat a bit more.

We are starting a new semester of Erasmus Seminars on 21 January 2025 with a hybrid lecture by Jakub Łukaszewski, senior librarian in the Department of Old and Rare Books at the University Library in Poznań, Poland. You can join online or in Rotterdam! More information: www.eur.nl/en/esphil/ev...

Some days, everything comes together: sent out an article manuscript for review AND a paper proposal!

I am fond of traveling by night train. Slowly more and more cities can be reached through long-distance trains. In past times, traveling by air was hardly considered. In 1969, artworks were brought in the night train from Basel to Rotterdam. A journey that will now be made by plane.

Here I am, a Bluesky n00b. Excited to find back many people from the other realm and still searching to find more people. Excited to again be in a place with fellow history enthusiasts to share things that are not so suitable for LinkedIn, the other social media platform I'm using actively.