Our New Zealand Adventures: SPRING TIME IN NEW ZEALAND

We made it through winter...and, golly, it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it was going to be! For one thing, it's SHORTER. Now that it's August, it should still be winter, but spring has decided to come early, and we are loving it. It's pretty cool in the morning, but it's been warming up nicely, and we're wearing sweaters instead of coats most of the day. Here's some of the beautiful spring flowers we've seen in the last couple of weeks.

We don't know the names of most of these beautiful trees, but here's the tree (above), and here are the blossoms close up.

Again, the tree to the left, the closeup below. The photos are good, but they sure don't completely capture the beauty...and there are so many of them everywhere.

This is a very interesting tree, not much greenery at all, but the flowers are so delicate and pretty. As before, the close-up flower is below.

We call these "tulip" trees because that's what the flowers look like. Not much greenery on these trees either, but they're also very pretty, and the flowers (seen below) are quite large.

Clyde says these are primroses. We see lots of these, all kinds of colors, in the gardens planted around the various towns. They are really bright, vivid colors.

And I knew these were calla lilies. We have a large bush of them growing in our yard.(Clyde says it's a plant, but they're so big, they sure look like bushes!) It looked like it was dying, then our landlord chopped it way back, and we thought it was dead for sure. A few weeks passed, though, and it started growing so fast, it seemed to change daily...and voila! We had these gorgeous flowers.

These are also growing in front of our flat, not quite as pretty, but they're unique and do add some fun color.

The fruit trees are everywhere! Right now we have all the oranges, lemons, mandarins, and tangerines in season. I know there are grapefruit, too, but we haven't seen those yet. Here's a lemon tree (small, but cute) and an orange tree. Lots of families have citrus trees in their yards.

Aren't these trees interesting! They look like orange berries, hanging in clumps like grapes, once again not much greenery on the tree. Below is the close-up of the berries.

This is some kind of fir tree, I guess, but we call it the "corn-on-the-cob" tree. Sure looks like cobs!

We see a lot of big, old stately trees that just look regal even without their leaves. I can see some particular grandkids scaling this tree....

Just another pretty flower...but we never tire of seeing them. By the way, we just keep our camera in the car, and as we searching for "lost sheep" in the Lord's vineyard, we also like to take pictures of His glorious creations.

We thought these were berries, but on looking closer, they were actually crab apples, lots and lots of them!

Another stately, old tree waiting for its springtime to arrive.

A garden of daffodils, one of the welcoming flowers of spring we see at home in Utah.

Frimley Park in Hastings, one of the many well-groomed parks we see in all the towns.
This particular park is known for its gorgeous rose gardens, which will be in bloom here in December.

These flowers captured our attention when we were in Napier inspecting missionary flats. They look like they might belong to the daisy family (except that this is a bush), yet look how large their centers are in the close-up picture below.

These beautiful flowering trees are everywhere now in New Zealand.

Big "purple" tree...this one is in Flaxmere.

Close-up of purple-flowers.

Saw this large, unusual flower on one of my morning walks in Hastings.

And right now (in October), there are these fascinating "pink" trees...but it looks like they're trying to change color, so we'll see what they look like in a month. Yep, they all turned green, but what a beautiful way to go to chlorophyll!

Close-up of leaves...you can see some darker ones, but most of the leaves now are losing their color. We're guessing they'll eventually turn green. It's interesting to watch the metamorphosis.