Oh Good, It’s Saturday

It’s Saturday again so here we go.  If you would like to participate please either click on the picture above or click this link.

SUNNY SATURDAY – WALKING LOTTE WITH FRIEND

After a couple of ho hum days, we woke this morning to brilliant sunshine.  As is my usual practice, I spent a couple of hours lounging in bed reading.  I was spoiled with coffee and toast before I got up.

Then it was off to the market for vegetables.  Once again, I bought too many but I do have a good friend with whom I can share.  So we now both have vegetables in our fridges, enough for the week.

The vegetable shopping was followed by hot chocolate and Danish at a local cafe.  Then it was off to discover new parts of this city where I have lived for the last 30 plus years, but where I keep finding areas of which I know nothing.

Today we discovered Truby King House and Park.  Sir Frederic Truby King CMG generally known as Truby King, was a New Zealand health reformer and Director of Child Welfare. He is best known as the founder of the Plunket Society aimed at improving the health and well being of mothers and infants.

He and his wife Isabella lived in an absolutely idyllic spot perched high above Wellington with unobstructed views over what then would have been countryside to the ocean.  Today it looks out of busy suburbs to the airport and beyond.  But the view still included the sea and it is quite spectacular.  The Wellington City Council now owns and maintains the grounds and the house.

The house is tenanted today – lucky tenants to enjoy that view.

But I want to share with you our walk today.  King’s house, a quite ordinary large single story wooden villa, that sits in 10 acres of bush and parklands.  A feature of the property is the fine examples of brickwork, in paths, pillars and arches around the park.

These brick archways abound in the gardens of the King House.

Another example of the amazing brickwork throughout the gardens.

More brickwork

There is a brick mausoleum  with the trademark brick
steps and path leading to it.

Having wandered around these gardens for about an hour this afternoon it was time to take ourselves back to the present where most of us have tiny gardens, if in fact we have a garden.  But we can enjoy King’s garden as much as he did during his lifetime.  Gardening was his passion and it is easy to see in the way in which the grounds are laid out, the thought that has gone into the planting, and although it is now 74 years since his death his legacy to this country lives on in the Plunket Society and to this city in the house and grounds he bequeathed to the people of Wellington.

I dream of hiking into my old age.
I want to be able even then to pack my load and take off slowly but steadily
along the trail.
Marlyn Doan

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