December 17, 2023 Up the Hill (Day 81)
Our hosts, Jack and Jill, invited us up the hill where they live, for tea, coffee and scones this morning. We walked up the steep driveway bordered by a lush growth of flowers and vegetation and enjoyed a wonderful few hours getting to know them. The property goes further uphill to paddocks where they keep Highland cattle and sheep in the pastures they have spent 50 years creating and maintaining! After we enjoyed the fresh, warm, savory scones and the pastries with our coffee and tea, Jack offered to take us on a tour of the upper reaches of the farm. We took him up on it and headed out to the barn where he revved up the side by side farm vehicle and drove us up the steep road through their forest tract to meet the sheep and cattle. Unfortunately neither of us brought our phone/camera so we didn’t get any pictures of the rolling meadows with huge distant windmills poking up into the mist above us, the many shaggy highland cattle Jack knows by name, the ram who demands his toll of feed to allow us into his pastures, the roly-poly sheep awaiting their shearing next week, the system of pond, water tanks, solar panels and piping to fill the water troughs, and the fencing, roadways, forest tracts and native bush that have all been created or restored by Jack & Jill and their friends! It is amazing! We hope to get another chance to see the farm and take pictures next week. Until then, here are pictures of their labor of love garden around “Te Whare Iti” (te-fare-eetee) or ‘the small house’.
Tall lilies along the front of the house.
Fuschias by the entrance.
Rhododendrons outside the huge wall window in the living room.
The wall window that lets in so much light and nature!
The windmill overlooking the stream garden across the driveway.
And the rose bush lining the driveway going uphill to Jack & Jill’s house and farm.
December 19th, 2023 at 10:08 am
Ahh – Jake would have loved it! We cruised once with a woman who ran a sheep ranch in Australia. She said in the afternoon she would whistle for her Aussies (dogs, not people!) and they rounded up the sheep while she had her tea! Beautiful flower pictures.