I showed last week three of the rose plants I acquired last month, one on the balcony and two in one of the new beds in the garden. The fourth plant was placed in the bed Ranji had created on his own when the workmen were tidying up after the new building was almost finished. It looked so good that I decided to match it on the other side but Kavi then suggested that the new construction should be a pond, and that has indeed worked well as was shown exactly two months ago on the parallel series on Water Features that appears on this blog on Saturdays.

The bed for plants had been well planted by Janaki but the puppies took to digging there, and then we found that a stone in the wall was loose and rats too were digging in there and it made no sense to plant anything there until that breach had been retired. But Janaki and Kavi did this on their own, without waiting for the workmen, and then we cleared a space at the bottom of the bed, and I put in there a plant with two magnificent red roses. The blossoms looked magnificent when the plant was placed there, and they continued magnificent for a couple of weeks more.

The first picture shows them in all their glory, and then the next shows them seen together with the purple lotuses that have sprung up in the pond, which I have neglected though I will make up for this on the coming Saturday.  

And now that I have moved down to the ground and to the north side of the house, I should also show flowers that were a joy when I first saw them, though they are not at all colourful. These are the flowers of the mango tree behind the new building, or rather of the northern one of the two that tower there over the building. Suddenly when I was walking in the upper room there three months ago and more, I realized that not all the greenery I saw from the balcony was leaves.

Delicate little flowers had appeared, and though over the days that followed some of them dropped off, others turned soon enough into fruit. I fear the squirrels and the birds will not allow any to ripen enough for us to eat them as fruit, but Janaki did when an unripe one fell make a pickle which I enjoyed, perhaps as much because of pride of proprietorship as for its taste.

And finally I show a tree on the other side, the ambarella tree in the garden which was the first to rise high of the trees I was sent for Christmas in 2021. That and the mango tree did best of those placed in the garden, but then a few months back, perhaps because I had tied it to another tree to keep it steady, it dropped its leaves and I thought it might go the way of the divul and lime and pomegranate trees that had been planted in this garden. But having sprung forward when it was released, so that it hangs over me when I sit on the seat next to the temple flower tree pond, it suddenly put forth some new shoots, which suggest that it will keep going.