The large water lily pond behind the main house was in terrific form, with the illustration left not doing it justice at all - but at least if you have been there yourself you will know the pond I mean. As well as being in terrific form it gave the lie to my theory that the leaves of any water lily will grow big, given the right circumstances. The dozen or more clumps in this pond, with oodles of space around them, had leaves of generally small size, whereas the one in our pond at home - maybe as much as three feet in diameter - has large leaves, with the leaves having grown steadily larger over the years, although the lily was sold to us as a small leaved variety. With the result that the leaves are sticking up all over the place, generally hiding the rather splendid dark red flowers from view.
I had the idea that there are large tanks of water with lilies in northern India, rather like this one but even more terrific, but a quick twirl with google fails to reveal much more than that there are plenty of water lilies in southern Asia generally. But it did suggest that the delicate blue lilies we came across a bit later in the hot house may well have been nymphaea nouchali, said by wikipedia to have been 'long valued as a garden flower in Thailand and Myanmar to decorate ponds and gardens'.
Tea with something described as almond slice, which last was dear (one needed two of them to make a decent cake) and rather sugary; no where near as good as the same sort of thing from, for example, Patisserie Valerie.
Succulents and cacti in the hot house in their usual splendid form.
Back home to second picking of blackberries from the clump at the bottom of our very own road. I had thought I was the only one at it, but it turns out that a neighbour has been having a go too, albeit on a more modest scale. Over to BH for tray freezing against blackberry and apple to liven up the winter desert menu.
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