The blog fell by the wayside there for a spell. The more clear it became that this would be our forever home, the more difficult it was to find an angle from which to keep writing, as this isn’t really a travel blog any more and I wasn’t particularly keen on writing a public diary. Nevertheless, as we’ve settled in here it seemed worth writing at least one more entry.
In July, our New Zealand resident visas came through and we bought a house. We’re a couple houses from the dead end of a road that runs a little less than a half-mile to the beach. The immediate neighbors are mostly horses and cows, though there are a few sheep and people as well. A lot of our friends live down toward the beach, and there’s pretty consistent traffic of kids in and out of the house when they’re not all in school.
The house itself was built in the 1980s and has a kind of bohemian vibe. It needs quite a bit of work. I’ve been at it pretty much non-stop since we moved in, but my to-do list still runs to a few pages. Above all we need a new roof, which is rather beyond my ability, and will hopefully get done in January. Besides repairs and some long-needed maintenance, we have plans for a few upgrades including the addition of an outdoor shower and a finished room in the attic, which should have some pretty awesome views (though maybe not quite so far as the ocean).
Our water supply is the rain that comes off the roof; a novelty for us but quite common in this part of the world. The gutters run into pipes that feed two 20,000 liter tanks buried in the yard. I got up on the roof to clean the gutters a couple months ago and just about had a nervous breakdown re: the gunk, vegetation and animal life that I found there.
We’ve put in a few big garden boxes, an asparagus patch, and planted a few fruit trees (avocado, lime, peach, lemon, feijoa). It’s fun to watch all of that growing. We also just planted some seedlings in hopes that we can establish goji berry bushes and passion fruit vines along our fence, which already has some blueberries and raspberries peeking through from the neighbors. Looking to take full advantage of the fact that the climate here is suitable for growing just about everything short of coffee.
Our property runs down to a creek, through an area that seems to have been planted with fruit trees at some point long ago but has since become pretty overgrown. The kids and I have been trying to rehabilitate it somewhat, and have cut out a little space for a few good-sized avocado trees that we discovered, in hopes that a little more sunlight will encourage them to fruit. Unfortunately the streambank is also host to a pretty healthy water rat population, which causes me some concern re: the garden. I think I’ve eliminated their means of ingress into the house (that was a whole drama in itself), but we still see them out in the yard from time to time. I’ve acquired a slug gun, which sounds rather serious but just shoots .22 pellets. Now that they know that I’m armed the rats seem appropriately intimidated. There is, however, a bunny in the yard most days. Maika has long forbidden the consumption of bunny meat for our family, so that problem would seem to require a more creative solution than murder.
We have a few other grand ambitions, chief among them the raising of chickens, which will commence as soon as I get to building a coop. In the meantime, the kids are busy with sports and music, and life is gradually moving onto the beach, as the water has just gotten to the point where it feels really good even without a wetsuit. We’ve had a few short trips to Wellington, Christchurch, and Cardrona (for snowboarding – this time I only cracked a rib, which given the state of my tailbone at the end of the last ski vacation, feels like progress), but it’s always a great pleasure to come back home.
From NY to NZ 