Brandywine at Independence

Posted on by Ian C.

Margaret & I sold our Gloucester home only last week, and planned to come down to Florida, and live at 8002 while looking around and searching for a great new home location. But rather unexpectedly, we’ve already signed a contract for our next home!
One big part of that decision, is this, which will be the view from the back:

This is Lake Joval, conservation wetlands, and we think it’s a quite lovely view.

Here is a couple of maps, showing where our new home will be; the first is the Independence development where our home is located, and the second shows (top left) where our new home is, with easy access to the 429 toll road running top to bottom on the left. In fact 429 runs close to our current home 8002, arrowed bottom left, also.
The other two arrows point to Magic Kingdom and Epcot, at Walt Disney World. Driving south from our new home on 429 gets us to the Disney parks in 20-25 minutes, a bit longer than now, but still pretty close.


Heading north from the new home location gets us to a large shopping mall in just a few miles, and further up gets us to Winter Garden, our new favorite town. From there, driving around the top of Orlando and East gets us to the airport, in much less than an hour.

So the location is just right for us, the new home is the right price, and we will be able to afford to have a pool / lanai built, and nicely customize everything … but for now, we just have to wait for it to be built! Probably before the end of 2013 …

Right now, our home is just a sign and sand, but it will be a “BrandyWine” home, built by Lennar at their Independence Executive location. I’ve marked on this Google Maps close-up view where our home will be, with the conservation wetland clear too:

 

Lots more excitement to come, this year!

Moved!

Posted on by Ian C.

It’s strange to talk about moving house, and to arrive back at 8002 which we’ve owned now for more than five years and already lived here for nearly six months this year – but now we’ve completed the sale of our Gloucester, Massachusetts home, and own only 8002, I guess we have moved!


I took some last photos of our old home, before we left:

All the best to new owners, Pete & Tara; and goodbye, for now, to our neighbors and good friends Pat & Dave, and Joanne & Earle, and their families.

Silk Floss tree growth

Posted on by Ian C.

A couple months ago, before we left 8002, I took pictures of the garden, including the Silk Floss tree that we grew from seed (see last years post). On our return, the Silk Floss tree has grown a lot; here’s my attempt to frame the picture the same:

Stepping back enough to see the whole tree, and close-up of the spikes on the trunk:

If it grows this much in two months, what’s it going to be like next summer?!