Back after two weeks to the Roof Garden, which has continued to flourish. I was away for ten days, and when I got back it was to find another host of roses, with blossoms aplenty visible from the balcony yesterday morning, in the pots and the beds of the eastern edge by the stairway. The first picture here shows the bed with three different colours of roses, seen from below, and the second the pot on the northern end with speckled red roses.

I was able to get up there in the evening, with Kavi and with Janaki, to water the plants – as a direct consequence of which doubtless it rained heavily in the night. As I went up, I had a pleasant surprise, for the pot I mentioned had a host of roses of different colours. How this happened, after months of blossoms all the colour of the rose on the right in this picture, I have no idea, but as the third picture shows the range was quite astonishing.

This may have resulted from the rich compost which we had been preparing for months, after Karu prepared a bin with an outlet at the bottom to take out the earliest stuff we had put in the bin. My brother had been most scornful of what was on top, and had perhaps as a result since two bins when there was only one, which I think prompted Kavi to lay out soil on the roof garden in addition to in the new beds in the garden as I had asked him to do.

The results were wonderful, as we see in the plethora of roses in the next bed along, though the picture is less striking that the one of these seen from below which is placed first here. In this fourth picture you see also the pot matching the first one, which had speckled roses as well as yellow ones, though only a single specimen of the latter can be discerned in the picture.

But the plant on its left more than compensated for this with a whole host of bright yellow blossoms. The next picture shows these, with beyond them Benjy on the balcony, insatiable in his curiosity.

I had tea up there while watering the plants and taking lots of pictures, more of which will appear next week as I talk about the other flowering plants up there. The last picture shows me with the bougainvillea on the northwest corner behind, its yellow blossoms visible. These have been present in profusion for well over a month, but now the purple plant has also begun to blossom though the picture does not show this.