I have over two weeks shown nine flowering rose trees in my roof garden, and there are still more to show from that memorable Saturday in early November. These are the flowers on the eastern border of the roof garden, a bed with three trees just on the right of the stairway as you look down, then a pot with the variegated bush I got in Ingiriya on my first visit to the new centre there, and then, after a bed with mainly impatiens flowers another pot, with white roses.

All these trees were in full flower, their blossoms a riot of colour. The first plant, near the stairs is the reddish orange one that was planted early this year, which has never really failed, but this time it had heaps of flowers. You see these in the first picture, and then beyond them the taller tree which preceded it, which has pink roses verging on white, though whether they began as pink or as white I cannot now recall. That plant is a beacon of hope, for its flowers are easily seen from the balcony, a solace when I cannot go up to the roof garden.

The same is true of the yellow roses beyond it, though you can see just a couple in this first picture. Most noticeable is the flower that sticks out against the wall of the balcony below, though its colour is such as to be subsumed between the grey of the cement and the green of the leaves.

You can see them also in the second picture, one flower prominent above the rail of the stairway, to the left of Kavi who was bringing up water for the plants, unnecessary as it turned out for it rained again that night. There are other blossoms too on that plant, but you do not notice them at first for the focus of this picture is the pot with lots of yellow flowers, of a slightly different shade, along with one speckled red rose, like the ones in the pot at the northern edge of this row, next to the stairs.

This pot as you can see has lots and lots of blossoms, and so does the next pot along, pink ones, seen clearly against the balcony of the other part of Lakmahal. I have two pictures of these, the second highlighting their beauty, with beyond them the white flowers of the temple flower tree in the next garden.

The next picture shows on their own the orange flowers I spoke about first today, seen against the wall of my own balcony below. After that you have a close up of one of the pink flowers next to these, to show the perfection of its formation, with behind it the orange flowers. Finally you have a panorama of the flowers mentioned today plus those in the big basin on their right.