I looked last week at the roses at two corners of the roof garden. The other two corners, as I have shown previously, are occupied by two pots of bougainvillea, which I have had from the days I took up gardening, though there were earlier on the balcony, and were moved up only last year. In the centre of the ...

I move today to the garden, to a tank I have largely neglected. This is the upright tank that stands in the porch, to the right of the first designer chair which I described several weeks ago. The fish best seen from there are those in this upright tank, and I mentioned this when I spoke about the chair, but ...

A couple of weeks back, after incessant rain had stopped me going up there for ages, I finally got to the roof garden. I think that in fact it had been just a couple of weeks but my impatience made it seem longer. That impatience was because, as I showed just a few weeks back, the roses there had begun ...

But I should not forget the original fish on the balcony, the small fish I put in the little tank, and then the angels in the big one, together with some round white fish. The angels bred almost at once, so only the parents were left with the little ones, dozens of them it seems. Sadly those I put in ...

As I have noted before, there are not many flowers in my actual garden, as compared with the plethora of roses, up on the balcony and on the roof garden. But I have shown some delights, notably the purple orchids that for a year and more appeared regularly on a branch of the dead temple flower tree. Unfortunately that plant ...

Well over two months ago I wrote of the sad reminder I had had of the ruthlessness sometimes of nature, given the depredations of the white fish on others I introduced into the second little tank on the balcony. This is below the seat on the east side, next to the bed in the corner which was my second effort ...

I have not written since August about my actual garden, down below, with its several ponds. Those of course figure here on Saturdays, but as I have shown there are lots of lovely trees down there, and occasionally flowers bloom. But I start today with neither flowers nor trees, but rather with an unexpected visitor in early September. This ...

I return after two months to the balcony where finally the fish in the little tanks below the seats and the flower bed have fulfilled the promise for which I had constructed them. The first one had been under the flower bed just by the big lotus pond, and I had started there with a variety of little fish from ...

Time after three weeks on top of my world to move down to the balcony where too, in addition to the lotuses and the fish, which feature on Saturdays, the roses continue to delight. Indeed I showed one of the plants last week, the newest entrant to the field, with the orange blossoms that had so enchanted me in Ingiriya. ...

I mentioned last week that both red carp put in the lotus pond vanished after a few weeks in which they had seemed very happy there. Too happy perhaps, for a predator may have found them easy to get at if they were too near the surface. The four put in two other ponds were more wary from the start ...

In returning to my roof garden I noted that the first two plants I had bought from a delightful old man in Ingiriya in August had continued to produce blossoms, and I showed the variegated flower in the pot on the left, looking from the roof garden, of the stairs, and yellow flowers on the one to the right of ...

I mentioned last week the red carp in the waterfall pond, and I have also shown them previously, though this has all been in passing, since I was concentrating on the fecund white fish. But I should talk about them today in detail, though this will be with some sorrow for of the ten I got way back last June ...

When I wrote last week about the joys of finally getting to my roof garden, after weeks of rain, I managed only to show the roses on the east side, though the last picture was of the west of the big basin with the temple flower tree and now. This was understandable for there were not so very many blossoms ...

Narme Wickremesinghe’s mother Patty was a great friend of Seelia Wickramasinghe and her sister Ranee Krishnaratne who lived together at Roshanara which I looked after for two years after Seelia’s son Rohan died. Ranee ran the Corner Bookshop in Colpetty and Patty ran the Fort branch after her husband Rev Percy Wickremesinghe died when he was relatively young. He was ...

So back now to the fish in the ponds below, with many shifts of population since I last featured them six weeks ago. I mentioned then the new fish I had introduced in June to the waterfall pond, which still goes by that name in my mind though the waterfall has not been used since December when we first found ...

I go back today to the roof garden, for yesterday I was able to get up there after ages, having been deterred by the relentless rain of the last few weeks. It did stop at times, but that was when there was no one else available to go up with me. Not only am I mindful of my commitment not ...

I have for many weeks looked at the ponds and tanks on the balcony, the blossoming lotuses for a month and before that the fish. Before that I had described the fish in the various ponds and tubs in the garden, so that there has been very little about the flowers there, since the early days of this series when ...

I spoke last week of the two main beds of the balcony, with their different coloured rose plants, and they are indeed the main attractions of the place in addition to the two lotus ponds with their flashing fish, which I show in the parallel column on this blog, on Saturdays. But there are too other repositories of roses on ...

I had intended this week to move down to the ponds in the garden but suddenly last week there were three buds in the bigger pond on the balcony, in addition to the one in the smaller pond, and then a couple of weeks ago one of the former blossomed. It was a great joy to see this, and as ...

It was well over two months after I had last written about it that I moved last week to the flowers on the balcony. I had started there five years ago, and I showed several pictures of the first bush of red roses I placed there, which gave me great pleasure over four years and more before finally giving up. ...