I move now to my first garden, down below, on the south side of Lakmahal, entered from a new door in my little drawing room. Both the garden and the drawing room are parts of longer entities which went to my sister when we divided up the house. She has a substantial stretch of garden, ending in the largest tree ...

I started this series with posts about the ponds on my balcony, in both of which white lotuses flourish. In the bigger one are angels, one of the original four I placed there nearly a year back, and heaps and heaps of his progeny that were born last October. I thought that I had descried those two ponds at length, ...

I indicated last week my uncertainty about the roses at the southern end of the long bed I was talking about. I thought then that the pictures I showed of flowers there, dark red and then verging on orange were of the same bush, but I had my doubts and now I think the opposite. For the dark red was ...

The only pictures that appeared with this were blue lotuses in the pond around the temple flower tree, taken in April and May this year. So I show those I had inserted to begin with, a blue lotus in I think the green bath tub, and then two from the temple flower pond of August and then September last year.

I have concentrated on fish in the two bath tubs that Nirmali gave me, the green and the pink, though as mentioned in passing there have also been plants in these. But the plants were not very successful, and for some months now there have been no blossoms in either. Indeed, in the pink one there are no leaves either. ...

I move now from the original bed in the south west corner of the balcony, home for years to my lovely red roses, and then to a pink bush which is still there, to the opposite corner of the balcony. That was where I replanted the white rose plant that replaced the red one, but which unaccountably turned pink so ...

I turn now to the balcony below the garden, and start with a survey of the other rose plants there. I have indeed shown one that was there, but that was in a pot later transferred as mentioned to the garden above. There are however others, including another pink bush which was planted in the same bed as my first ...

I began last week with the green tub which Nirmali gave me well after the pink one that was placed next to the ehala tree, on the right of the doorway into the garden. The green tub went on the left, further forward, for it was beyond the porch, where there was a croton bush that had begun, after the ...

I have written over two months about my Roof Garden, so I think it is time to move on. But as the title of this series I decided on indicated, that was just the frosting on the cake, and what lies below can also figure here. But before I move to the balcony below the roof garden, from which I ...

That first pink tub which Nirmali gave me before coronavirus struck was followed by another one towards the end 2020. That was a green one, and I placed it just in front of the croton tree that is in front of the door from my little drawing room into the garden. So that too is visible from my designer chair ...

I have not said much thus far about the two furthest beds from the stairway to the roof garden, in part because I have not done as much in those as in the rest of the place. The one on the south, where I had placed barbatons, has not done well. Some weeks back I showed a bud there, and ...

I mentioned last week the yellow bath tub in my garden, in connection with the fish there, having dwelt upon its flowers a few weeks back. But there are also a couple of other ponds in the garden created from bath tubs, apart from this one and the pink one, also from Lakmahal, where the big pink gourami lives along ...

I had not thought I would be able to post today, for I was supposed to be in Kumana, but yesterday morning when en route I was called up to be told there had been a burglary at home. I called the police, who had responded promptly, and Janaki stayed at home to show them what had happened, but I ...

I wrote three weeks ago about the first pond in the garden, or rather the first tub, the yellow one in which pink lotuses flourished. I concentrated on those then, but I should also now say something about the fish that fill it, and are a solace now when, though more and more lotus leaves appear, there have been no ...

I believe I have shown already in a picture the lemon grass round the temple flower tree. Karu had brought this as well as a karavila creeper to set on the tree. And as mentioned I had planted a few more flowers there, including the yellow ones I mentioned last week. Those died but were reincarnated in a flourishing tree ...

Back to Lakmahal today, and the pond which I have not spoken of much so far in this series, the biggest in the garden, and the first actual pond. Before it there had been the yellow bath tub, the lotuses in which I described a couple of weeks back. It had been essentially for lotuses that I had got that, ...

There was initially a problem about my getting up on the roof with others for Toby got most upset when we abandoned him below. The first time I started to climb he rushed at the tank but, sensible dog that he is, he now knows he should not approach it. To mark his boundary I have built a little square ...

I move today to a very different sort of water feature, moved to this by a wonderful night I had at Getamanna this week, following the launch at Sabaragamuwa University of a multilingual journal. The first volume was in my honour, and I was overwhelmed by the kind thoughts expressed by all the speakers. Delightful too was the fact that, ...

I have mentioned in earlier posts in this series how initially I could not get to the roof garden and had to suggest placings for plants from the balcony or from the roof. But as pictures have made clear, for the last six months and more I had access. This was through a narrow iron stairway built on top of ...

I concentrated when I started this series four weeks ago on the lotus ponds on my balcony. This was because of my excitement at them both producing a couple of blossoms each last month. But I realized then that I should also pay attention to my first lotus pond, in the garden down below. That was the yellow tub from ...