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 the balcony, a little bed next to the west wall beyond which are the stairs, and also a pot of white roses, which I love. The plant I put into the bed by the doorway had turned pink, as was the other plant there, which is why I moved it to where it still is, in the east, replacing it with the orange plant shown last week.

I then got however a plant with large white blossoms, and that has done well in the pot which is on the left as you step out on the balcony, next to the little bed of green I built up in front of the big tank northward and my seat on the east. That has just one or two blossoms at a time, though it did in May have three together. Or perhaps not quite three, for in the first picture there are two blossoms and a bud, and in the second the bud has blossomed but one of the others has begun to fade.

In June a cluster emerged, unusually, and I show them set against the green of the bed beside them, a picture taken in early July. August then saw just the one flower, which I show just opening out, and then in full flower three days later. Finally I show the September flower, again a model of perfection as are so many of the blossoms of this plant. And behind it is a bud, giving promise of more to come.

But before that, for a little bit of colour variation, I show a bright red blossom on the plant in the bed next to the seat, against the west wall. That plant has figured on and off over the last couple of years, and I have shown that one could not be quite sure what its colour was, for though basically red it sometimes had dark red verging on purple, sometimes a lighter shade verging on orange.

Like the red plant I put in opposite, in the long bed, this one too used to fade away at times, but whereas that finally died, to be replaced by the new orange blossom I showed two weeks ago, this plant was tenacious. For a long time it did not flower, and put forth those long strange tendrils that betoken barrenness, but I have learnt to cut those off, if not always soon enough, and that brings success, as with this quite splendid specimen. This picture was taken just a week ago, and the bud had developed slowly and lasted, a great pleasure to look at on my right, as I feed the angels on my left and exult in the double lotus blossoms there.