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There are two other beds in the downstairs garden, in addition to the two I showed last week. One was there from November, in the corner between the downstairs bedroom and its bathroom, and I have tried roses there but they have failed to produce blooms, doubtless because not enough sun reaches the place.
I have greater hopes of the other, which is against the other wall of the bathroom, just next to the garden tap, and the first picture shows Benjy drinking from that tap with his feet on the wall of the bed, a precursor doubtless of destruction of whatever I plant there. At the moment there are some shrubs which have survived his incursions, and I show them direct in the next picture with on the left the jasmine bush that has sprung up under the trellis.
After the other bed, with the sad plants that remain there, I show the latest joy of the garden, another blooming orchid. This is on one of three plants placed on the dead temple flower tree, where two or three times a couple of years back a purple orchid bloomed. This one is white, but shows up well even in sunlight against the trunk of the tree.
And then once again there are blossoms on the little temple flower tree against the east wall. It produced several and then there was a hiatus I think because other plants around it blocked the sunlight. But now there are two blossoms, and I show them together and then the one higher up.
I return today to my fish, and though there have been losses recently, I thought I should show something positive given that there was so much about loss earlier this year.
When disaster struck the pond by the dining room, I removed all the fish that were there except for the one white gourami that had survived. The four catfish, two black and two white, were put into the waterfall pond, where there had been two black catfish earlier. I had not seen much of them in the six months and more they were there, for they lurked in a little cavern behind some of the rocks that had been loosely placed. But they did emerge for food and I would wait most days till I had seen both before moving on to another pond.
This was unlike the two I had put in the ehala tree pond, whom I had for that reason moved to the dining room pond. There I did see them, so I was sorry to put them in the waterfall pond where I thought they would be elusive, but there seemed no alternative.
And I also put in there the three black catfish which I had put into the tank on the balcony where the white Malavi I had put there had eaten the small fish I had put in there with them. But three of them died, as did one of the four catfish I had started with, so I thought I should that tank of them and instead have little fish.
But when Kavi then added five catfish to the waterfall pond, I told him to remove some of the Malavi which had dominated the pond from the time the original pair there spawned, so that, including later progeny, there were over a dozen there. Four of them were moved to the dining room pond, and some smaller ones to the original lotus pond, to join the little fish I had put there when we replaced the mud.
And then when the waterfall pond had even numbers as it were of different types of fish, seven black catfish and seven Malavi, four red carp and two white catfish, the black ones were much more confident and they are visible when I get to the pond of a morning. They dart about energetically, and the two white ones emerge from their grotto, and weave in and out amongst the carp and the Malavi.
The first picture shows them all mixed up, with one of the white catfish too at the top. The second shows the pond when it was dominated by the Malavi, and the third the little tank on the balcony with Malavi and catfish. Then I have again the pond, when the red carp had been added, followed by a rare glimpse of an elusive catfish. And finally you see the current menagerie of several colours.
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.
I failed to post here on Saturday since I was travelling, and we started earlier than I had thought we would and arrived later. But since on Mondays I do not post usually on either this or the literary blog, I thought I would make up for Saturday by talking today here about my ponds.
I did not want to delay, since the ponds have done very well after the netting was put up. Two weeks ago I showed the new lotuses towering above the netting around the small pond, and last week the lotus that shot up by the wall in the bigger pond.
These were followed by more flowers in both ponds. The little pond had a bud waiting for me when I got back there on February 13th after almost a week away, and it began to blossom three days later, and was flourishing on the 17th, when I had to leave again.
And on that day the little bud I saw in the bigger pond on the 13th had developed, though it was still a couple of days from blossoming.
I show those two flowers in turn, three stages of the first and two of the second. In the last of these pictures you can see a couple of the angels in the background, for they seem quite confident now. And then the next picture shows them at the front of the tank, where they now gather when I go up to the balcony, a demand for food that I had not seen before.
I mentioned some weeks back the new red rose I had obtained for the bed next to the smaller pond on the balcony. There had been two blossoms on it when I put it in, but one had collapsed on the way to Colombo.
But the other blossom looked splendid, and before I went away last month there were several buds emerging, and by the time I got back, at the end of the month, it was full of deep rich red blossoms. I show first a view of several of them, and then one of the brightest of the blossoms, with a speckled rose behind. Sadly below the flower you see one of the fish which had died in the tank on the balcony.
And the old beds too continued to put forth flowers in profusion, or rather the two pink rose plants. I show here a view from above, and then a host of the blossoms.
The bigger pond on the balcony also had, after the inroads of predators in December, to have protective netting placed all round it. This was easier than for the small pond, since much of the bigger one is under the main roof of the house. Still, Kithsiri put up netting all round the wall of the pond, to stop the polecat prowling along the top, from which he could easily scoop up any fish near the surface.
He had tried to do this, as the crane had done, sticking its beak in from the front, as I knew from not only the fearful cowering of the fish but from one dead one that seemed to have been skewered. But after the netting was placed they began to return more quickly when I put in their food, though this is still just in swift darts upward, and it is only after I have moved away that the bulk of the food is devoured. But there seem to be quite a lot of the angels there still, which causes me great joy, for these are children as it were of the house.
The bud in the pond when the railings were put up died without blossoming and then for a month and more there were no new lotus blossoms in that pond. I was just beginning to worry that there would be no more when I saw, after it had risen quite high, a bud at the front of the pond, just next to the seat. And a few days later it had begun to blossom early in the morning, and the next day it was in full flower.
I show first the bud and the opening blossom and the flower, followed by glimpses of the angels coming up to feed, above them the green netting visible on the edge of the pond. Finally there is a picture of the pond after the little green netting was put up around it.
I showed last week the roses this month brought me on the east side of the roof garden. But there were lots elsewhere up there too. In the bed in the middle one of the earliest plants I had put there had a lovely pink to purple blossom, and I show it full on to begin with, and at the end too as I bent over it.
In the bed on the south west corner, the two bushes of baby roses continue to do well, the yellow one now showing white blossoms too, along with the little white one in the corner under the seat. Then there are white roses also in the pot on the east, which I did not show last week. These are seen against the purple impatiens which continues to throw out blossoms in profusion.
These last roses were however on their way out, as were the roses on the plant Anuruddha gave me which is in the middle of the big basin, next to the pink rose I showed to begin with. But even in age they show what a lovely sight they must have been a few days earlier.
In the next basin along there was just a single rose, but it is worth showing for its colour. And after that I have another burst of colour in one of the cotton plants on the east side.
Altogether a feast, making me marvel at how well these flowers do up there, with no shelter at all from terrific rain and blazing sun.
Last week’s post was chaotic, with the third paragraph being repeated, and then the next two also, at the end. How this happened I have no idea, unless it is that the computer thought it should meet the word count of 500 I had earlier set myself, having failed to register that I thought shorter posts better for this year, leaving more to the pictures. But since the pictures last week were sad, the covers over the once free ponds, perhaps the computer cannot be blamed.
So I will try to pacify him with nice pictures today, of the joy of what I might call the revived water features of the balcony. The little pond there was denuded of fish, once and then again, so that the barriers around it had to be built tall. That succeed in keeping the fish safe, but I feared that would the end of the lotus blossoms.
They have however appeared, one after another, over the last month. There was a lovely bud there when I went away on the 18th night, and it blossomed the next day. It had died of course by the time I got back, but Janaki sent me a picture, and also told me that another bud had emerged, and shot up so that when the first flower faded it had also begun to blossom, and was awaiting my return. And the day after it too had passed away, its petals a carpet on the water below, another bud I had not noticed stood tall at the other end.
And the fish there are a delight to see in the morning, though I have to look at them through the now high netting on all sides. There are four rosy barbs, pink in colour, and four tetra, two of them red and two green. And I am pleased that the platies I had put in earlier, whose continuing safety assured me that the protective netting was now high enough, are also still there, floating in amidst the rest for their food though initially they were quite shy. Indeed the fourth pictures shows one of them feeding on his own in the front, whereas the first and the last pictures are of the further corner. The third picture shows Lara in her favourite perch as a Lotus Eater.
Rajiva Wijesinha 