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.