Around town -Sumner

We have been here now for over a week and I am beginning to get a feel for the community. 

The Bower family lives in Sumner, a borough of Christchurch.  The town spreads along the coast and sprawls slowly up the valley between two legs of an ancient volcano. Driving east into Christchurch, you pass through other small communities where the rock comes right up to the sea and the many layers of volcanic rock and ash can been seen in cross-section.

For reference, the nearest large landmass to South Island is Antarctica which plays an ever ready role in the weather systems here.  Lyttelton Harbor has been and still is the key staging point for Antarctic expeditions.  

The houses along the beach are quite nice and of modest size although not of modest price. The all have a full on view of the ocean which they capitalize on with lots of glazing. But as you move back away from the beach, most of the houses are smallish and on smallish lots.  Many have lovely gardens full of flowers -lots of roses right now- and ornamentals (many of the plants growing in yards are those we only keep as houseplants!), but they have an unfortunate custom of surrounding their lot with high board fences or walls.  While that may afford some privacy, it means that when you look out any window of the house all you can see is fence.

As you move up the valley, things improve.  The houses seem to get a little larger and because many of the lots are on a slope, they lose the fences.  Bob and Ali's place spreads up the cliff three levels, each with walkouts on the hillside and a nice deck on the valley side.

It is an 18-20 minute walk from the house to the beach or town centre, whichever.  Sumner is something of a travel destination in the summer so there are quite a few restaurants, a movie theatre, a nice little library, a grocery, meat market, fish market, hardware store, etc.  

Thursday was the last day of school and we had been walking the kids to and from school -a sixteen minute walk, so a touch over a mile.  Avery is taking riding lessons at a stable which is about eight minutes up the valley on foot.  we do a lot of walking here.

Looking down the street from the deck

Nice place to sit and enjoy the sun

The front of the house: far left is kitchen,the dining are and right is living room.  Upper level is upstairs bath and master bedroom with a small deck

Deck facing northeasterly.  The sun spills over the deck as it comes up, but being in a valley doen't crest the ridge until about 7:30.  In winter Bob says the sun disappears about 1:30 pm.

The weather so far has been less agreeable than the travel books claim.  We have had many days when wearing a pullover or jacket were necessary.  We are only a few days off from the summer solstice.  Lots of rain yesterday.  That said, on nice days it has been comfortably warm and in the morning a cool sea breeze wafts up through the valley adding a moist freshness to the beginning of the day.  

As you can see, they have had some dry weather, in fact something of a drought according to the newspaper.  The hills above town are already yellow and brown looking a lot like California.  As there are lots of dairy farms, the shortage of water is being felt particularly on the North Island.  Selfishly, we would welcome some dry days as we begin our road trip after Christmas.  

This morning, Bob, Rowan and I are going off to look for a Christmas tree.