For my penultimate post in this series this year I will get back to my lotus ponds on the balcony, the subject with which I began the series, but which I have neglected since the end of September. There was a host of blossoms at that time, but though not so profuse, this continued over the next few months.

So in October there were blossoms in both the little pond and the bigger one, and these appear first in the pictures. Then in November I cannot recall anything in the little pond, but the picture shows two blossoms in the big pond, and the next has one of them in full flower, the day before I left. But sadly Janaki told me that the other one, which had been very little in the picture taken two days earlier, had not blossomed.

I suspect there is a beast around who bites these buds, for the bud I found on my return, seen in the next picture, was truncated a couple of days later. I had found it lurking behind the gutter, for there had been just a stalk thrusting its way up towards the tiles and it was only when I gently drew it forward that I saw this quite perfect specimen. Unfortunately I kept it there, thinking it would do well in the sun, but then it fell prey to a predator.

I am sure it was a predator, for the angels there only came up slowly that morning, and in the little pond the fish were nowhere to be seen. Earlier they were on the surface when I went up in the morning, but on this day they had clearly been traumatized, for it took them ages to emerge after I had dropped in some food.

But nothing had happened to the bud that had been there the day I got back, though it is close to the balcony wall and could well have been preyed upon. And then, in less than a week, it had blossomed, only just but beautifully so. As I have previously noted, the blossoms here take a long time to come to fruition, and it took six days from what you see in the seventh picture to become what appears next.

But there has been disappointment too, for on that first day there was also a little bud in the pond. But having got just a little bit taller, it ceased to develop. And then real tragedy struck, for the angel who had survived there on his own for several months finally gave up. This was while I was away, and Janaki said he had been fine in the morning when she fed the fish, but later that day she found him dead.

Absurd to sorrow much for a fish, but he was the first I looked for when I went up to the balcony, for I had known him I felt for aeons, and I had pride in how he had survived so much movement. And after the trauma he had been the first to emerge, so that in the days before I went away I had been delighted to see him.

But I took no pictures in those few days, so it is an earlier one I show, before a picture of his burial. In that picture you see also the little bud that failed to develop, and up on the top right you see my now lost angel.