It was six weeks ago that I wrote about the flowers on the balcony, and that was just in one post, for I was keen to move up to the profusion of roses in the roof garden. But I did show the profusion of roses in the bed on the east of the balcony, with its three bushes, orange and pink and then a deeper orange. And I also showd the other bed, in the southwest corner, with pink and orange roses.

The first plant in the eastern bed was bleaker than the other two in October, but by November it had produced a few blossoms, and I show them first, a single flower and then two, taken from the top of the stairs to the roof garden. In that picture you see also two roses in the pink bush in the middle, and I show those blossoms in close up in the third picture.

And meanwhile, as I mentioned in that last post, the bush on the west, against the wall of the stairway to the balcony, was also doing its bit, and it actually produced unusually two blossoms together. You see those from the north and then from the south, where you can also see the seat beyond which is my vantage point for feeding the angels and looking at the bed opposite on the east side.

Then I cannot resist one more picture of the tall orange plant in that bed, two blossoms, a couple of days before I left for Greece. And by the time I got back, in December, that plant had no flowers. But waiting for me were a host of pink blossoms in the bed in the southwest corner. I show them and a close up of one, which I think is from there, though by then there was also I think a blossom in the bed on the east.

And there were incipient buds in the tall plant, and just a couple of days ago the one over the edge of the bed flowered. You see that in the last picture, with another bud beyond it, and below is a pink blossom in the little plant next to it. Unfortunately there are no blossoms nor even buds on the taller orange plant on the other side of this bed, nor on the orange plant in the southwest bed, but little red shoots have appeared so I live in hope.

And so too in the pot which had white roses, of which thought generally only one emerges at a time. There is nothing however in the red bush in the west, and in fact there was another of those long shoots which just grow and grow and come to nothing, so that had to be pruned. Still, I cannot complain, for there has been enough colour, to say nothing of the lotus blossoms, to go with my coffee when I feed the fish up there in the mornings.