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But I never saw those angels again clearly. For when I cam back, in February, though I could see black fish at the bottom of that little tank, I could not be sure which they were, angels or the original inhabitants. And as the days passed, and I saw just three black shapes, which came to the surface as they had done previously, I realized the angels were all gone.
There were no bodies. I did find when I trawled the bottom there that one of the platies had died. The other was still there said Kavi, when he looked, but he saw no sign of the angels. And I thought then about the irony of these lovely little creatures, put in when I thought all was safe, vanishing off the face of the earth, while all but one of the original little fish I had put in to check on whether the tank was suitable had survived.
And it was the sadder, because in the bigger tank the angels all seemed to flourish. The white ones that had been big in early January were even bigger now, and the black ones had increased substantially in size though still much smaller. I show them here at the end of February, with the parent fish also in evidence, for now he comes up when the others do for food, having been a bit restrained earlier which I thought was because he wanted to give his children first bite. But as the next picture shows, some of his white children almost rival him in size.
I was not sure whether the angels transferred to the little tank under the flowerbed had died because they had been choked by too much pond weed. Though initially I had wanted only lotuses in my big pond, Karu had put in pond weed as well as a different type of lotus, for he said the fish would like that to help cool the water. I did in time remove the other lotus, but I kept the pondweed for the little angels to hide under, and I put some also into my new tank, and also into the first small tank on the south one when the lotus plant there had died. The third picture shows the little tanks when the pondweed was beginning to spread. I follow that with a picture taken a couple of months earlier, where you see the two angels and some of the red and the pink fish that were there earlier, seeming less restrained.
My first inkling that pondweed was not too good for angels was when Janaki told me that she had found one of the big angels in that little pond gasping for breath. She had taken him out and we managed to revive him, but when I looked into what was obviously a cluttered pond I found that the other angel lay dead amidst the weeds. These two were the two that I had removed from the bigger pond when the parents of the little ones saw them as hostile.
The last two pictures here are of those two fish, the one we rescued, lying half dead in the bottom of the pail which we treated with salt to revive him, the other of his partner being buried.
In moving down last week to my actual garden, I showed the flowering ehala tree, which continues to be the most colourful feature of the place, as it was before that garden on the south was truncated. And then I showed temple flowers, but on the driveway to the north, since the one in my little walled garden had died.
What does flourish there, after the little garden was created, was a kohomba tree I planted in the middle of the area, from a plant that had been given me when I chaired the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Hearteningly, we were encouraged to plant trees, by which agency I do not know, but the Director General kept supplying me with plants, and I had two kohomba saplings when I had to develop my garden. One came here and the other I placed on the driveway, but that did not survive, and though dormant for some time it finally died away when I started building on that side.
But the one in the walled garden grew by leaps and bounds. I show it here soon after it was planted, in April 2018, and then two years later, when I got back to Lakmahal after two and a half months at the cottage when curfews stopped me travelling between the provinces from the middle of March. Toby seemed to hugely enjoy being back then, and the picture was taken when we were able to resume the practice of early coffee in the garden.
I had hoped then to show it a couple of years later, from the balcony, through the roses there, with behind it the jak tree, which I did not plant, but which also developed from a sapling which had somehow got there when the garden was created. They seemed in competition to get taller and taller. That picture however will not fit, though I will try to show it when I tweet this post on @RajivaW. So the next and last picture here, taken on a glorious Saturday in May this year, is of the kohomba tree towering over the balcony where I was, and so verdant that you cannot see the jak tree behind it.
Those trees, towards the south east part of the garden, have no flowers, but there is one other tree which does flower. I should have shown it last week, for it is a temple flower tree, though what is termed a bud, for it is small and will never reach the heights of those I showed last week, dead or alive. It was planted by Janaki against the eastern wall between my space and my niece’s, and soon it flowered.
It did so well early that I thought there would be lots of colour on that side, but buds were sporadic after that, perhaps because the shrubs on that side kept the sunlight away. So a few weeks back we engaged in a massive cull, and this morning I noticed at last a new bud. But that is not ripe as it were for display, so I show instead, only on twitter though, a couple of buds from last year.
When I found such a large number of angels in the large lotus pond, the growth of whom I showed last week, I decided, never being able to leave alone, that there should be another little tank for some of them. For when I sit on the little seat against the south wall that separates the balcony from the staircase, with the big pond on my left, I have opposite me a long bed with two rose bushes in it, along with a smaller one with one bush on my right that was built when the pond was. And I thought as I sat there that, under the old long bed opposite, there was a space which seemed ideal for a little tank with a glass front, through which I could see the burgeoning angels.
So early in the new year I asked Anura, my expert in fish tanks, to build one there, and he did a quick job. But I blundered in thinking the glass needed cement at the side, so it was not as long as would have been idea. And it could not be as high as I had assumed it would be, for there was need of space between its top and the bottom of the seat, so a hand could be inserted (and Anura indeed prided himself on being able to stick his head in).
After it had been filled with water and coconut husks to get rid of the savour of cement, I wanted to put in some angels. But Kithsiri said that was premature, and I should first experiment with some smaller fish from the garden. I told him I thought that would not be proper, to destine these for death if the tank did not work, but in the end I gave in, for it was necessary to have some fish in there to stop mosquitoes breeding.
So in they went, three little black fish which had also been born at Lakmahal, though I put back in the pond downstairs a parent who had been caught with them, but who I thought might leap out of the tank. And then there were two sari guppies, and two platies. Before long they were well settled in the tank, and when I fed them in the morning I could see the three black fish against the glass, moving sedately, and also the two sari guppies, their bright tails flashing along. The two platies were more nervous but they too could occasionally be glimpsed.
A few days later, since they seemed to be thriving, I put some angels in. Kithsiri got a whole host in the net he put in, and I decided to put some of the smaller ones in, on the grounds that they would not then have to compete with the bigger ones for food in the larger tank. So I put in eight of them, more than half of them black ones which were comparatively smaller and a few small white ones. And over the next few days I could see them coming forward for food, though they tended to stay at the bottom of the tank, gliding slowly against the glass as angels do.
I show firar the three black fish and two sari guppies in that tank, and then its construction, with the coconut husks too. But I then show the little black angels in the big tank at the same time, for I did not take any of them in the days after I put them in the new pond, before I went abroad at the end of January.
I move now to my first garden, down below, on the south side of Lakmahal, entered from a new door in my little drawing room. Both the garden and the drawing room are parts of longer entities which went to my sister when we divided up the house. She has a substantial stretch of garden, ending in the largest tree we had at Lakmahal, the temple flower tree the blossoms of which I have shown more than once from my little balcony.
She also has the round verandah that opened onto the garden from the long drawing room, whereas the area I have only had three windows set together, so that had to be opened up when I lost access to the rest of the drawing room and the door onto the verandah. But this has worked very well, and though a little bit more space would have been welcome I have no regrets about having given in to my sister’s desire for straight lines, so that she now has more than half the space that was left to us jointly.
It is quite enough to walk in of an evening, after I gave up the treadmill following post-covid exhaustion, and perfect now for the new puppies to play in, morning and evening. I will start then with pictures of them, five years after the garden was first created, playing early one morning against the background of the house and the ehala tree which is still to my mind the best feature of the garden. Toby watches indulgently from his favourite spot, in the corner between one of my designer chairs and the wall of the drawing room.
The next picture is of that tree in full flower a couple of months back. Behind it are the rounded edges of both the balcony and the roof garden which I have dwelt on earlier in this series. And after that we see the tree a week ago, still laden with blossoms though far fewer than in May and June. These are seen against the bathroom that juts out on that side, a pendent to the rounded structure over the porch outside the door from the drawing room.
That is the only large flowering tree in this garden. Sadly the one temple flower tree I had died, even before the garden was walled off, and as shown in the companion piece on this blog about water features, it is now surrounded by a pond. I have shown that in the Saturday series, so today I show flowers it does host, the most luscious orchids.
For temple flowers I have to be content with the trees on the driveway into the various sections into which Lakmahal has been divided, and I show next both the yellow and the red trees there. Though flowers are sparse, they are a lovely sight when I sit on the little bench I had made outside the garage of the new building on that side, a whole row of trees extending down towards the gate, beginning with the bigger tree that, like the biggest on the other side, bears white flowers, if never in such profusion.
I started this series with posts about the ponds on my balcony, in both of which white lotuses flourish. In the bigger one are angels, one of the original four I placed there nearly a year back, and heaps and heaps of his progeny that were born last October.
I thought that I had descried those two ponds at length, but on checking I found that there had been just a couple of posts, and these had concentrated on the flowers. So I thought that today I would show how the angels developed, from the tiny creatures that Karu suddenly identified when he was building the stairway upto my roof garden, which is featured on the companion piece that appears on this blog on Wednesdays.
Their parents protected them assiduously, but we helped by taking out the tetras that were there, which went to one of the tubs in the garden, and also the other two angels who were kept at bay. But all these efforts exhausted the mother, for just two weeks after the babies were seen, she died. The first picture here shows her cradled on a lotus leaf before she was buried, on October 24th, and the second shows her offspring, still quite tiny, a couple of days later.
But they developed apace, as the next picture, taken in December, shows. The white ones grew quicker than the black ones. You see one of each sort here, while the big fish that can be dimly discerned below is the father, who still survives. Interestingly, he held back initially when I dropped food in of a morning, but only for a couple of months, for when his children were old enough to look after themselves, he fed with a vengeance.
A couple of months later they were bigger still, though not as yet in the league of their father, as the fifth picture, taken in March, shows. By then they had lost all inhibitions and clustered avidly when food was dropped in, making a splendid kaleidoscope as seen in the next picture. I scattered the feed now in several places to give them all a chance, though still very much against the back or side wall of the tank. The next picture taken in May shows a host in the north west corner of the tank.
The next picture shows them last month, but at a distance because I wanted to show a lotus blossom, the last one that appeared in this tank. That was just before I left for England, and the buds that emerged after my return, both near the west wall where there have been no blossoms thus far, were spoilt. The one I show next was developing well, but then the stalk was broken, so it droops though you would not think that from this picture.
What follows, taken immediately afterwards, would have been the last picture today, but I find that the third one I mention above, taken in December, does not as yet seem to have loaded. So I end with another
I indicated last week my uncertainty about the roses at the southern end of the long bed I was talking about. I thought then that the pictures I showed of flowers there, dark red and then verging on orange were of the same bush, but I had my doubts and now I think the opposite. For the dark red was in March 2022, the bare tree in July and the orange flowers in September.
That I think was when I got two rose plants, both red but of differing shades, one for this bed and the other for the new bed I had just created on the other side, against the wall of the stairway coming up to the balcony. For that bed was created at the same time as the big tank for lotuses and fish, with a little seat between the bed and the tank, which allows me of a morning to feed the fish and gaze contentedly at the flowers on the other side.
That was when I obtained the plant that appears in the first picture here, red flowers verging on purple. Last week I showed two pictures of the other plant, on the east side, both taken in September, so I show it now in October, and then in February of this year. In between is a picture of the roses on the west side, taken in December, when those roses too seemed more orange in shade.
But that is the last I have of blossoms there, for this year there have been none, though shoots proliferate, including those long ones that indicate no flowers will bloom. I will have to trim them, and hope a more promising growth at the bottom does take over and produce flowers.
The same fate seems to have met the rose plant in the little bed on the south east corner, next to the first little lotus pond which has featured here already. For a long time there was a bush of yellow roses that were sometimes orange, alternating as it were just as did the bush at the north end of the long bed on the east which I showed last week. It did so well that I was quite happy for a lime plant which sprang from a seed I had spat out there to flourish, and only when it was quite big did I move it, to the roof garden where I have shown it burgeoning.
The fifth picture shows its blossoms framed against the lime leaves, while the next shows them from another angle together with a budding lotus. These pictures were taken last August, and the colour verges on orange. And in the next picture too, taken on the last day of February this year, the bud seems that colour. However in the next one, a few days later, it is yellow, which made me wonder whether this was in fact from the other bed. But the little wall at the right seems to be that of the lotus pond.
The only pictures that appeared with this were blue lotuses in the pond around the temple flower tree, taken in April and May this year. So I show those I had inserted to begin with, a blue lotus in I think the green bath tub, and then two from the temple flower pond of August and then September last year.
I have concentrated on fish in the two bath tubs that Nirmali gave me, the green and the pink, though as mentioned in passing there have also been plants in these. But the plants were not very successful, and for some months now there have been no blossoms in either. Indeed, in the pink one there are no leaves either.
But for the record I should show what there has been. Most of the flowers came with the plants I put in, first from Aluvihare and then from Getamanna, and finally a couple bought from the lady who has supplied me recently with the white lotus plants with which this series began. I did in fact place white lotuses in these ponds, but those plants did not have blossoms and they swiftly died away.
The blue lotuses that I got from various sources did have flowers, and new ones did at times emerge, two or three times in the pink tub. I had removed the plant that had come from Aluvihare with the little white flowers that I have shown previously, or rather two of the three plants that had been there. And without those, and with new buds, I thought the blue lotus plants had taken root. But then they died away, and all there is now in that tub in the last of the tall plants with the occasional sprig of white flowers.
So all I have now are pictures, and unfortunately I can find only one today, a blue lotus in what I think is the green tub. I do hope it is that, for I seem to have no others of that. I know that somethere there are a few of flowers in the pink tub, but I cannot show them now.
What there are plenty of however is flowers in the pond around the dead temple flower tree. With regard to that too I concentrated earlier on fish, but here are several blue lotuses which rose one after the other, both last year and this. And as can be seen, they have varied in shade, almost pink as well as deep purple.
I move now from the original bed in the south west corner of the balcony, home for years to my lovely red roses, and then to a pink bush which is still there, to the opposite corner of the balcony. That was where I replanted the white rose plant that replaced the red one, but which unaccountably turned pink so I had to remove it from proximity to the earlier pink one which is still there.
The bed in the north east corner of the balcony was a long one, where initially I had had impatiens flowers, three colours in a row. The purple one continued for ages, and the pink one for a shorter time, but the red died out soon after I got the plant. Then from somewhere, perhaps an offshoot of one of the three original plants, Sunil produced a white plant too. The first picture here shows the bed when he had put in another purple plant, so that this colour dominated the two ends, with white impatiens in between. And you can see there a little bit of the bougainvilla that in those days were, in their pot, just in front of the roof.
But then, when I wanted more roses, and my attempt to grow them in the main garden, in the bed behind the pond round the dead temple flower tree had failed, I decided to move the impatiens down there. And I then planted rose bushes on either side of this bed on the balcony, with purple impatiens flowers in between.
The second picture shows these, bright red at the southern end, orange in the north next to the roof. But I seem also to have planted a white bush, tending to pink too, in the middle, behind the impatiens flowers. I do not recollect his, and since this picture is from 2002 it is not the white bush I received on Valentine’s Day this year which turned pink and was transferred.
The flowers in that bed too kept changing colour. I have shown an orange blossom at the end, but then that bush started to produce yellow flowers, which can be seen in the third and fourth pictures. I was wondering whether I had put a new plant in, but the fifth picture shows both yellow and orange blossoms on that bush together.
So too the red roses on the other end changed colour. In the second picture you see them as a dark red, with even darker blossoms to the right. But in the sixth picture the red verges on orange.
But I have to confess that I cannot be sure this is the same plant. For the next picture shows bare bushes in that bed. That was taken in the middle of last year, and perhaps I replaced the one on the right, though I have no recollection of that.
I will next week indicate why I believe strongly that this is the same plant, with changing colours. For today I end with a picture of that bush, in its orange phase, nine months ago, taken against the wonderful old white temple flower tree that is now in the garden belonging to the other half of Lakmahal.
Rajiva Wijesinha 