The Seasons of our Life

Just thought I’d give you a sampling of our good fortune in eating here. Look at this spread we got at the “Simply Fresh” vegetable and fruit market. The name is "spot-on"!



This is what we got: three somewhat smallish heads of broccoli, a humongous beautiful white cauliflower, ten scrubbed carrots, eleven tender little zucchini, four little bell peppers, five tomatoes, the biggest cabbage I’ve ever seen, six yellow onions, a bag of spinach leaves, twelve big, crunchy, sweet, juicy Braeburn apples, and fifteen cute little mandarin oranges. The cost? Under $10 U.S. Unbelievable!! It’s all New Zealand grown, so it’s fresh and hasn’t been in cold storage or shipped in. We’ve made these things our staples now! Since this picture, we’ve also found a real buy in NZ-grown potatoes. A ten-kilo bag (22 lbs) for NZ $4, or US$ 2.40. Twenty two pounds is a lot of potatoes, but we store them in our under-the-eaves storage and they keep just fine. The taste is SO GOOD!! I thought a potato was a potato, but these are wonderful! They’re not sized or graded, which is probably why they’re so cheap. You can buy potatoes here which are caked with mud (like that Plano black gumbo), or brushed, or washed. The washed, of course, are the most expensive, and look almost skinned, like new potatoes. Obviously, for the price we paid, we own a little NZ earth! We've also had the sweetest pineapple I’ve ever tasted, two of them for a dollar NZ, or sixty cents US. Unheard of! We’ve found a way to survive here, in spite of their fixation with sausages, marshmallows and fish and chips! I still must say I miss Mexican food and big pieces of chicken and potato chips!! But Dad can prepare vegetables in more ways than you could even imagine, and we’re really enjoying them!

We have this pretty camillia hedge under our balcony that has just been blooming it's heart out. Not big full blooms like the camillias we're used to, but little single petal blooms. However, you can see what the rain has done to them. The ground has just been carpeted with petals, but in spite of that, the hedge just keeps blooming. The rain has been very dominent for the past several weeks. It rains nearly every day. Every night, for sure. We wake up with the streets wet, and the temperatures cold. For whatever reason, and no one can explain to us either, they have built houses here without insulation and without heating. So it's basically like living in your garage, as far as comfort goes. We actually had ice on our windshield when we went to work the other day. And they say it never freezes here. It's a damp cold, because of all the rain, and we have literally been chilled to the bone!! When we got home from work the other night, Dad changed his clothes and went into the kitchen to start supper. This is what I found:

He was just being a dork, and he got the laugh out of me he was trying to get. He did take off his gloves and hat, but it was literally that cold in the house! We frequently turn on the (empty) cothes dryer as soon as we get in the kitchen to create a little warmth (it vents out through the door).

One of our little retired ladies in the retirement village told us we could have her space heater because her son was buying her a new one. That's what they all use to heat their places. It puts off a good glow, if not much heat, and we call it our "fireplace' because of the glow. It actually makes it look very homey in the living room without the lights on.

But to really feel the heat, you have to get right up to it, which I frequently do!!

Finally, the cold broke for the weekend, the sun came out, and we couldn't stand not to be out. We walked down to the lake, and it looked like everyone else that's been holeing up inside had the same idea. Even the ducks and birds and swans were out in full force.

We saw several black swans in the lake, and they have beautiful markings. Look at the white feathers under this one's tail.

As we left the lake, this is what our day looked like. Kinda reminds me of a New England calendar picture, huh?

Dad had checked to see when low tide was, so we continued down to the beach. What a gorgeous day it was turning out to be. The beach, too, was over-run with people, and everyone we passed commented on what a beautiful day it was. The sun was just drawing everyone out!

This container ship was starting out to sea and it was fun to see how fast it actually went. I've never seen containers stacked like that.

We had a really wicked storm a couple weeks ago, with strong winds and rain and just generally nasty weather. We walked down to the beach that evening, and it happened to be at high tide. The waves were smashing and blasting against the sea wall and whipping and spilling all over into the parking lot. It looked like something you might read about in a Jane Austin novel, happening along the cliffs in England. Very ominous and treacherous.

This was the scene, however, on Saturday with the tide out. Hard to believe the difference! This part of the beach is covered in black volcanic rock, that, at high tide, isn't visible.

Dad is just fascinated by the beach at low tide, and loves walking among the rocks and the tide pools created in the crevaces of the rocks when the tide is out.

He wanders and looks and feels and totally enjoys seeing what he can find each time. Very relaxing for him.

This time it was another big starfish, but so attached to the rock that he couldn't pick him up.

We'd brought a lunch, so we found a warm, sunny spot to eat and soak up the sun we'd been missing during all the yukky days of shivering and freezing. It was so nice to be WARM again.

Then Dad, like he's always done, found a place to stretch out and let his lunch settle. Familiar?? Did we ever take a trip where he didn't find a picnic table to have a quick little snooze after lunch?

All in all, it was wonderful to be outside and enjoying the sun and beautiful scenery again.

The end of a perfect day!