And there was another pond to add fish to when I got back from Greece at the beginning of this month. This is down below, in front of my seat outside the garage. A few months back Ranji had the bright idea, when they were clearing up after the last major work on the new building, of setting up an elevated flower bed in the space behind the wall by the driveway, and I have much enjoyed seeing the shrubs and flowers which Janaki put in there, and have indeed shown some of them, albeit several weeks ago, in the companion piece about my gardens which appears on Wednesdays.

I thought then of adding a counterpart on the side by the garage, but Kavi then suggested we put a tank there, which struck me as an excellent idea. So when the workmen were here last month, to work on raising the garden wall, I got them to build a tank here, and that was actually completed before I left. But then of course it had to be filled with husks to take away the fumes of the cement, and it was only when I got back that these were discarded and fresh water put in.

This now seems the best place to move some of my angels, but as with the upper tank, it is best to have some lotus plants sheltering them. Unfortunately the lady who had supplied me with the flowers that are doing so well on the upper balcony has not had tall plants for some time, so I will have to wait. But meanwhile the water needs fish, to prevent mosquitoes breeding.

I have shown previously the little basins in which Janaki placed lotus seeds, and how they sprouted, though all died away. I had wondered if this was because I had moved them too quickly into ponds, but the last one that had produced a couple of new little shoots just earlier had also vanished by the time I got back from Greece.

After a couple of days in a pond when the leaves seemed to droop, I had moved it to the window sill of my dining room where it caught some sun. I put in a couple of little black mollies, but two of them vanished in rapid succession, and after that I looked out for their two replacements anxiously every morning, having also placed slates on the basin to protect them. This required a careful balancing act, since I also needed to make sure there was sun for them.

To my enormous relief, they were both there when I got back, though the lotus shoots had gone. I moved them then to the big tank outside the garage, and added four more, and they soon got quite confident and disported themselves all over the place.

But I do worry about them, and count them anxiously every morning when I feed them. A couple of days after they went there, it seemed there were only five of them, but then later that day the sixth re-emerged. But then the next day I found the littlest dead at the bottom of the tank.

The second picture is of him being buried under the little rosemary plant that is in a pot on the border of the tank. But before that I show the fish on their first day there, so they are still very much at the bottom, gliding along while Rocky has his yoghurt.

After that I show the two fish in the basin on my window sill with a green lotus shoot and then the basin on the balcony, with the fish but no clear evidence of a lotus plant in the midst of the greenery that had spread on the surface of the mud. And I end with a picture in which you can see four of the fish in the new pond, along with the basin in which two of them had survived for so long.