Our New Home!!

We found a place to live! We are very excited and feel very lucky to have found such a nice place and it's only 4 blocks to my office. Our new address is: 306 Knight St, Hastings, Hawke's Bay 4122, New Zealand. We are in a very elegant part of town with many old, but beautifully restored homes. Come inside the gate and see where we're going to live.

The Front of our new Home

The front of our new little house; it looks very much like an English cottage. We think the house-hunting fairies were watching out for us. 90% of homes have only one bathroom (that's even homes that are new, too!) This house has 2 bathrooms, a large living room, 3 bedrooms, good-sized kitchen (by NZ standards) , family room, entryway/sunroom and a great little fenced yard for the dogs. It is COMPLETELY furnished ~ the only thing it doesn't seem to have is an espresso machine. (Bet it won't take long to fix that!)

Entryway patio

This is the front patio. Just to the left, out of the picture, is the front door. The entry way is a small room with wooden parquet floor, and 1 and a half walls that are floor to ceiling glass. A very welcoming, sunny little room. Two of the walls in the entry way are the same color as the wrought iron patio table and chairs! Screaming blue. Notice the lavender bushes bordering the patio.

The Front Garden

This is the "before" picture of the front garden. When we dropped by the house, right after signing the papers, there were two "garden gnomes" (or so they called themselves) busily trimming, weeding and cleaning the gardens and yard. Even though this picture shows how pretty the front yard is; it was even more lovely after the gnomes had been there. There are 2 or 3 spots that will be perfect for morning tea. The variety of plants around the house is mind-boggling. I would guess there are no fewer than 50 different flowers, trees, shrubs, vines, herbs etc etc. Certainly some things you can't grow in Prescott ~ you should see the purple and scarlet fushia that is loaded with blooms.

Look, a piano!!

Included in our new little abode is a baby grand piano! It is absolutely exquisite. Notice the windows above the piano ~ makes for a beautiful lighted room. Unfortunately, there is to be NO water or liquids anywhere near the piano (the finish is immaculate) so there will be no big vases of flowers on top. Think I will be taking up the piano again ~ after all these years.

The house is full of comfy, attractive furniture,too. We feel VERY lucky!

Roses and Lemons

These beautiful, big, red roses are in front of the living room window (there are lots more roses that you can't see in this photo) and the lemon tree, that is currently loaded with lemons, is right in front of our bedroom window. The little bit of pavement you can see is a very narrow driveway that goes to our neighbors behind us; you can see their house here, too.

Driveway Roses

These are some of the roses lining our little driveway. The variety of flowers is amazing.

Lake Taupo

We had lunch in Taupo, right on Lake Taupo which is very near the center of the north island. Very touristy ~ I'm sure we'll go back and spend a little more time there. There were people jet-skiing and swimming in the lake ~ hardy folks here. That water was COLD!!

You can just barely see snow on the peak of the mountain in the background. It looks like cloud, but it's snow.

Taupo

This is a street drain in Taupo. Pretty interesing art work on a drain.

New Zealand BIG Dog.

This "Big Dog" is a building in one of the little towns we drove through. To the right of the dog's nose you can just barely see the top of a similar building that was a sheep. Very cute!

Road to Hawke's Bay

There are miles and miles (oops, I mean kilometres and kilometres ~ actually they just say "Ks" as in, "Go up the road a few Ks") of these trees along the road into Hawke's Bay. They are very tall and definitely evergreens but unlike any kind of tree we've ever seen before. Below the trees you can just barely make out some small yellow bushes. They appear to be very similar to the Scotch Broom of the NW. We didn't take any photos of the Scotch Broom (Roger's sinuses and throat were clogging up due to the pollen so we just drove through as fast as we could) but they were the most amazing shade of yellow and there were acres and acres of them.

This is our first view of the Pacific Ocean as we drove south into Napier, a city just north of Hastings. The picture doesn't do justice to the color of the water ~ it is an amazing "Caribbean blue." Although we haven't been to the top of the hill in this photo, we hear the views are wonderful.

Hawke's Bay Terrain.

This is the 180 degree view from the ocean photo above. The Hawke's Bay area is known for its vineyards, orchards and wineries. We love the terrain here! This is almost desert compared to some of the areas we saw. As a matter of fact, the plant closest to the road in this picture is very much like the Joshua trees one sees in the deserts in the southwest US. There is such a variety of plants. Everything from desert flora to rain forest ferns. More pictures to come!