My holiday in Hawkes Bay New Zealand

I have returned from a very enjoyable holiday in the Hawkes Bay area with my older brother and sister-in-law. My younger brother and his wife drove me down there with my little 6 year old nephew. It is about a 5 hour drive, so we decided to stop overnight at a friend's batch (holiday home in New Zealand language) on the edge of Lake Rotowiti in Rotorua to break the journey up a bit.

The weather was glorious. When we arrived at Hawkes Bay, where my brother has built his new house, it was 32 degrees C and remained around this temperature most of the time that I was there.

My sister-in-law breeds miniature horses and has now got 22 of them. They are delightful, especially the young foal who loves to be cuddled.

Here are some of my sister-in-law's bantam silky hens plus a speckled bantam. They occasionally lay around 2 to 3 eggs a day between them.

For my birthday my younger brother and his wife took me to the UB40 concert which was held in the Havelock North Tuki Tuki Valley with views of Te Mata Peak. When the band arrived the sun came out from behind the clouds and the wind dropped. We had an amazing time.

Then a couple of days later my older brother and his wife treated me to dinner at the Terroir Restaurant which is in the Craggy Range vineyard in Havelock North. The food and atmosphere was excellent.

I spent my days relaxing at my brother's new house reading, chatting, taking photos and being taken on day trips around Napier, Havelock North and Hastings.

Here are some photos that I took from the top of Te Mata Peak which is 399 metres above sea level. The weather again was glorious.

See you again soon

Hugs
Rose x

The garden and miniature foal as promised!

After the amazing lunch made by my brother, chatting on the veranda, watching the guys play petanque on the lawn and taking photos inside the house, I decided to wander off and have a look around the garden and then see the new foal.

The main flower beds had unfortunately suffered from a run-off of lawn weed-killer. My sister-in-law managed to save the apricot coloured carpet roses that she has on one side of the lawn, by cutting them back. But one of her beautiful white standard roses died. It is such a shame because they look stunning when they are all in flower.

The herbaceous border looked really pretty with ruby red penstemons and a bush with pink pea-flower shaped flowers. I don't know the name of the bush. I should look it up in my plant encyclopaedia, unless you know what it is called? (You can get a closer look if you click on the picture).

The wooden bird house at the back of the flower bed is really cute. My brother and sister-in-law get a lot of birds coming into their garden. A huge flock of turtle doves visits them a few times a day for food. And a while ago 24 wild mallard ducks frequently came for a feed. It was lovely to watch until they became too cheeky and started walking and pooping on the veranda. Not so much fun to clean up!

About a third of their 3 acres is native New Zealand bush (woodland). Just at the edge of this they have built a wooden gazebo surrounded by red, yellow and orange canna lilies. It's lovely to sit here, out of the heat of the full sun, and look over into the bush. I sat there for a while hoping to see some native wild birds to photograph, but I wasn't so lucky this time.

So I just took more photos of the beautiful brightly coloured canna lilies.

The sun was so bright that I couldn't see any of the photos that I was taking in my view finder. I just decided to point my camera, try to keep it straight and clicked! I kept my fingers crossed and hoped for the best. I was pleasantly surprised when I uploaded my photos onto my computer to check them out :)

I hope that you aren't bored with all of my canna lilly photos lol. I just had to post them all because I think they are so pretty. This is the last one, I promise!

This is a view of the native bush on their land. The trees with the spiky leaves are called cabbage trees, though they look nothing like cabbages! My brother has made a network of pathways through the bush, right down to the bottom where there is a running stream. I walked a short way down, but I was wearing high heels. Not exactly the best footwear for tramping through bush! Next time I will remember to take my trainers, then I might be able to get some really good bush photos.

And here is Coal, my sister-in-law's new foal, with his mother Violet. They are miniature horses. It is hard to see how small they are in this photo. Coal is just knee high and his mother comes up to my thigh! Coal was born on the 5th of December and loves my sister-in-law, letting her cuddle him. He will eventually change from being this grey colour to black with white markings.

He is so photogenic and posed perfectly for me.

So cute!!! After this photo Violet decided that was enough and herded Coal away from me.

It was a perfect day.

See you soon. xxx