Water Features 25

I have for many weeks looked at the ponds and tanks on the balcony, the blossoming lotuses for a month and before that the fish. Before that I had described the fish in the various ponds and tubs in the garden, so that there has been very little about the flowers there, since the early days of this series when I described what I was trying to achieve down there.

But most of the posts were about fish because, as I explained, the lotuses I placed in various tubs there, and in one pond, had no great success. The first tub, the yellow one, had a profusion of pink lotus blossoms for a couple of years, and then the rain seemed to do for them though there was a revival last year. But then with the rains towards the end of the year there were no flowers and though new leaves keep appearing there have not been new buds.

In two other ponds I tried the lotuses that appear on the surface, olu and manel, and I showed various blossoms, though the various plants I put in, from Aluvihare and from Getamanna and then bought on my way back from the cottage, did not prove successful. A couple produced new buds after those there when I put in the plants had died, but this did not last and soon enough they died away, though in the green tub at least the leaves continue to bloom on the surface.

In the pink tub the long leaved plant with little white flowers took over, and I thought it had done for the lotuses, for indeed I saw that at Aluvihare too when I was last there. The pond that had been full of blue lotuses in the past with a few of these white flowering plants is now full of the latter, with not a lotus to be seen.

I have little then to show today, except for a history of failed experiments. I start with pictures of the pink tub under the ehala tree, the first picture taken I think last year, showing I think a blossom from a plant I had placed on the eastern end. I fear I cannot work out what the reflection is of that you see beside it, apart from a glimpse of me with the camera.

In August I bit the bullet and removed the last of the three white flowering plants I had kept in that tub, and replaced it with a dinky little lotus. But after it flowered, nothing more appeared and the bud it had brought with it died away.

Perhaps the pernicious effect of its predecessor still lasted. Anyway the third picture shows the pond at Aluvihare with no lotuses in sight, and just the tall stems of the white flowers. But there are none of these flowers and those you see are I think impatiens clustered on the bank.  

There was some success however with the dinky little lotus plant I placed in August in the pond around the temple flower tree, for the blossom you see in the fourth picture was joined a week later by another, and it continued to bring forth new blossoms into September as seen in the last picture.