Treasure Chest Thursday - My Father's Botanical Notebook

evaporation test

My father, Teunis Pieter Bos, was born on 10 May 1929 in Cillaarshoek, and passed away in Strijen on 19 June 2021. His father, my grandfather, had started a horticultural business, so he send my father to the horticultural school in Barendrecht. Recently, on the attic of my parents' house, I found a pile of my father's yellowed notebooks, dating from the time he was studying in Barendrecht. To my surprise, it turned out my father could draw very beautifully. I didn't know that, because my father was always busy working on the farm. After he finally “retired” around the age of 88, he did a lot of cycling. At home, he solved Sudoku puzzles. I've never seen him drawing anything.

My father once told me that he couldn't go to school during the last year of the Second World War, because the school was in Barendrecht, which is on the other side of the Oude Maas River. The Allied Forces had advanced to the main Dutch rivers in September 1944, but they were unable to cross at Arnhem. As a result, the island of Hoeksche Waard was heavily shelled by the Allied Forces during the last winter of the war. They had liberated North Brabant, but the Germans still occupied the Hoeksche Waard.

Here are two drawings my father made in a notebook about botany.

strawberry plant