My visit to England last year was pure nostalgia, covering several different periods in my life. Its principal purpose was to wish my Dean, Leslie Mitchell, on his 80th birthday. He it was who, several years ago, wrote the superscription to this piece, which struck me as so appropriate for his life and mine, when I was putting together extracts ...
I have talked for over a year about the fish and the flowers at Lakmahal, self-indulgently I realized, as I noted three days ago in ending the Wednesday series. I have changed that to talking about travel, for I realized too that, while I had written much about travel since I started working actively on the blog after coronavirus struck, ...
They say that the past comes back to haunt you. I don’t think it haunts. I think that it envelopes you like a warm blanket. Chris Hall, one of my dearest friends at Oxford, was at my 70th birthday party there. I was seeing him after ten years, for he had been at the last of my 60th birthday celebration ...
Having gone the round of the ponds in the main garden, I should mention again the pond by the garage, which I last looked at, and that cursorily, a couple of months back. It continues splendid, except that no lotuses have blossomed there since the host of flowers, white and purple, that appeared in the first few months of the ...
A repeat post, since no pictures appeared! Back home after a fortnight away, I find that it had rained horrendously while I was away, and it still continues to rain. So my morning ventures to the balcony, to feed and admire the fish, have to be short, for even if the rain has stopped the seats are all wet. The ...
Back home after a fortnight away, I find that it had rained horrendously while I was away, and it still continues to rain. So my morning ventures to the balcony, to feed and admire the fish, have to be short, for even if the rain has stopped the seats are all wet. The seat under an overhang, next to the ...
The pond around the temple flower tree, against the south wall of the garden, abutting on the tortoise enclosure, is also full of white Malavi, many of them born here so they are of varying sizes. Amongst them is one pink tetra, though I do hope there may be at least one other, of the three that were originally there. ...
Parallel to the tank in front of the ehala tree I spoke about last week, in the porch by the croton tree, is the upright tank Lohan gave me some years back. That has housed many different fish in the five years I have had it, but now it has just five, two catfish, one big carp, and two little ...
I have not previously shown the driveway to the entrance to my house, and indeed to the new building, but this too is a joy to look at. I show first the view from the little seat outside the new garage, which is one of the places for my morning coffee, giving Rocky his yoghurt and feeding the fish in ...
There are no Malavi in the next tub along, the pink one which was the first Nirmali gave me. It was set against the ehala tree, which is about parallel with the croton bush, so the tub is further north than the other one, and to the west. I tried to have lotuses there, but failed as I have noted, ...
I have showed orange and pink roses on the balcony in the last two weeks and I move now to the red ones. The two bushes with red roses also did well in April. The little bush in the little bed against the west wall abutting on the staircase produced two blossoms together, which is unusual, and I show these ...
The yellow bath tub, from the downstairs bathroom at Lakmahal, which I wrote about last week is against the east wall of my little walled garden. At right angles to it, just outside the porch which leads to my drawing room, is the second bath tub which Nirmali gave me during the time of coronavirus, a green one which is ...
Last week I showed the orange roses on the balcony, on three bushes in the first two beds I set up there. In between the two orange bushes in the long bed in the east, there is a small pink one, which has been producing blossom after blossom. I last it in March, just after I had got back from ...
I have not featured recently the four bath tubs in the main garden, for now the fish in them are difficult to take pictures of, given the nets. But this is not so very different from the situation earlier, for those ponds were full of leaves so it was difficult to capture clearly the fish in them. And except for ...
Back now to the balcony, where the roses continue to fascinate. I have been particularly struck this last month by the shifting shades of the bush in the original bed at the south west corner of the balcony, where for years I had flourishing red roses. The current orange bush has lasted for some months now, whereas a couple of ...
It has been over two months since I wrote about the waterfall pond, with its wide range of fish, black and white catfish, red carp though the four fish were of four different shades, from a bright red to one that just had tinges of pink on an essentially white skin, and seven fish that I thought of as Malavi ...
Only the ambarella tree and the mango tree survived of the five plants I put in at the end of 2021, a most welcome Christmas gift. Both of them did well, though as I said I worried for a bit about the ambarella tree when almost all its leaves fell. The mango tree moves more slowly, with spurts about twice ...
Down to earth now, and though there have been no lotus blossoms in the ponds – and it was indeed only the one by the garage that had flowers in profusion, until the time I left for Canada in March – the fish with the exceptions I mentioned in the posts after Canada have done well since the reorganization. In ...
Time now to move down to the main garden, for the ehala tree has begun to blossom. There is not quite the profusion you find in May, which I exulted in last year, both here an on Facebook when I described a wonderful May morning when I exulted in my garden. But there is a start, and I show a ...
