Lotus at last

I love my bargain and rescue plants, but I can safely say my new lotus plants are not amongst them. In fact, it was a stretch to spend so much on two plants, but I've wanted my own lotus for so long I decided to go for it (after a lot of dithering). 

I bought two smaller cultivars: the red Bunga Baby, and white Angel Wings. The tubers spent a fortnight or so in two buckets of water, waiting for the new rootlets to appear. 

[Temporary glamorous home in a bucket.]

Then I potted up Bunga Baby into a very swish container: that garden stalwart, a polystyrene box, filled with garden soil, bought compost, seamungus pellets and a dash of blood and bone. I carefully covered it over with a load of all rocks from the garden do all the soil didn't wash out. Then I put it into the pond (giant black plastic tub) and walked away, whereupon while I wasn't watching, the whole lot flipped over and dumped the contents into the bottom of the pond. Oops. I decided to just leave it there, since it was covered pretty well still, and now I had a spare box again. 

Then I repeated the process, with the addition of some Dynamic Lifter I found in the shed, remembered to take some photos this time, and also remembered to keep an eye on the box as it sank into the pond. 

[New rootlets, pinky white.]

[Tubers like great white worms in the soil.] 

Fingers crossed for some flowers this year, or at least masses of lovely leaves.