After nearly two months I go down again to the main garden, though there is not much to show there in the way of flowers. However while I was away in January Somapala corrected the deficiencies I have noted previously with regard to the new little beds in the garden.

He raised the level of the bed in the southwest corner, next to the little round seat that was fitted around the trunk of the mango tree that had died before my sister and I divided up the property. We did not want to cut down the tree so the wall was built on either side of it. But it decayed, and soon space developed on either side, through which I believe frogs hopped in to the several ponds in the garden on one side. When finally the tree had faded to nothing, we removed it and bricked in the wall, and since then I have had hardly any frogs, and no tadpoles.

Before that I had built a little seat round the trunk, and that was filled in when the trunk was removed. Behind that semi-circular seat, faced with both kabok and granite, Ranji painted the new bit of wall to suggest the surface of a tree. The first picture shows that and the seat and next to it, against the south wall and stretching almost to the jak tree that has shot up over the years I developed this garden, the bed with raised sides.

In front of it is the swing which I moved here from the other side, when I had to build props for the dead temple flower tree where my father had originally placed the swing. And next to the trunk of the jak tree is the tall garden light which my father I think put into the garden, though again it was originally on the other side.

The second picture shows the bed behind the light post and the tree trunk, with on the other side of them the deepest pond I have, which I still call the waterfall pond though the waterfall has not been operated since the white fish there, Malavi I believe, spawned, eighteen months ago. More and more little ones emerged, though only the first brood survived in large numbers, so I had to hold back on the waterfall, though perhaps now, with only one little one there, and he bigger than the meshes of the net round the motor, all will be well.

The third picture is a close up of this raised bed, and the fourth shows the bed on the other side, by the pond round the temple flower tree. That is the same height as it was, but this bed has a few plants, ginger on the right and some anthuriums which Janaki moved when Benjy and Lara started to root in the beds around the supports for the tree. You can see the pond at the right, and in front is the short garden light I put there to replace the tall one moved to the other side.

The little bit of granite in front on the left is part of the bench I brought from Roshanara, and the last picture shows that with the bed on the left, the mango tree in front, the tortoise enclosure behind and on the right one of the props, now denuded when the anthurium beds had to be moved.