I looked at two of the beds on the balcony last week. There are three others, or rather two beds and a pot. In the last are white roses, a tall plant that has not failed thus far to produce blossoms, one or two every month or so. They are perfectly formed roses, and I show first today a close up of one, and then that one together with another, both of which lasted quite some time.

The very first bed I put up on the balcony now has a small plant of pink roses that also never disappoints. The larger orange plant there, which took the place of the red one I cherished over four years, is less prolific, but it did have a blossom opening on Christmas Day, which you see third here, with a pink blossom and a bud. And the pink roses were in full flow a month later as the next picture indicate.

Unfortunately I have not taken any pictures of the other bed, which has red roses, rarely but there has been a blossom there right through this month. It has little foliage though and I fear the worst, but it has somehow survived now for a couple of years.

Meanwhile I finally after ages added roses down below in the main garden. While I was away in Greece Somapala built up three beds there and, though two are in perpetual shade so I do not think flowers will flourish there, the third does get sun in the mornings. So I put in a couple of plants in December and then another this month. It is these last white roses that you see next.

But the other two plants there have not produced blossoms after the first ones with which they came, and it seems that this plant too will not do well, for its buds did not bloom, apart from one. I fear the sun is not enough, though perhaps this was because of the incessant rain, and I will keep trying for a few weeks more, until perhaps I have to retreat to shrubs as I did with the first bed there, above the pond around the dead temple flower tree.

After these pictures there are variations on the same themes, beginning with Lara exploring the new white roses in the garden soon after I got that plant. Then I show earlier white roses on the balcony, and then the yellow rose of Christmas in bright sunlight a couple of days later with two blossoms on the pink bush.