I go down now to the main garden, or rather, first of all, to an area I have not looked at before. This is the little strip of land at the back, which was generally covered from view by the garage, the old one, and now the new one. But of course above the new garage is the new building, with balconies at the back. Now that I have taken to walking on the upper floor, my different circuits involve both balconies there, and so I have a much better view of that area.

And I was struck earlier this month by the flowers on the mango tree just behind the bedroom which abuts on the boundary wall. There are two there, and I had to cut a lot of branches, for the building and also later when they had thrust themselves forward again. But they are still magnificent, and keep putting forth new shoots. For the first time too I was able to see the flowers, and the first picture here is of them. They are interwoven with the plantain leaves that have shot up very high there, and which have provided us with lots of fruit in the past.

In the second picture I show the second mango tree, which is behind what remains of the old staff quarters, now converted to a quaint cottage with the addition of a part of the garage which became a bedroom. But you see nothing of that, the balcony that looks onto that area being off the pantry of the upper floor, matching the balcony that is further in of the little bedroom.

Before I noticed the delightful flowers on the mango tree, there was another set of unusual flowers in the main garden, when suddenly the Kandyan Dancer orchid burst into flower. Long ago, when I set up that garden, in 2018, Kavi had gifted me a couple of plants, but they only produced one blossom at a time, and that too for just a couple of years. This was on the ehala tree, and though the plant placed at the back of the house did better, that too was fallow for ages. And then even the purple orchid on the temple flower tree, though it did produce a few blossoms, also seemed to give up.

A few months back we decided to move these orchid plants and others Janaki had got to the trees at the back of the garden, against the west wall, which does catch sun in the afternoons. But nothing seemed to happen for ages, and I was giving up hope when suddenly there were two shoots of flame there, and a host of Dancers, captured in the third picture.

Later that month the workmen came back for some repairs in the house, but also what I had thought necessary after the break in, the raising of the garden walls. This was done through netting, going up several feet on all three sides where there are neighbours, and it looks as good as could be expected, as we see in the last two pictures.

They are both taken from the little corridor outside my bathroom upstairs, one from the window that looks west to the porch and the wall which separates my garden from the part that went to my sister, the other from the window that looks south, over the pond under the temple flower tree, with the area belonging to my brother on the right.