Saint-Orens, France

August 2005

We moved to Toulouse in March 2005, having spent the previous five years living in Edinburgh, Scotland.

After a three-week holiday in the sunshine and warmer weather, Narelle moved to Paris for a month and did her CELTA (teacher training course) while Yves stayed in Toulouse to organise our wedding. We were living on the ground floor of Yves' family home in Saint-Orens de Gameville.

Saint-Orens is a small suburb about 20 minutes' drive outside of the city centre and not far from La Cité de l'Espace. It's quiet and pretty, but there's just one bus an hour into town, making it a rather isolated place to live, particularly for Narelle, who had little knowledge of the French language and no right to work until her visa came through.

About a year later we decided to get our own flat in Jolimont in February 2006 which is practically in the city centre, and is walking distance to the metro.

Narelle's journal of our first few months in France, living in Saint-Orens:

We've been doing a bit of gardening now that we actually have a garden and one of the first things we did was renovate the existing pond which had been created 15 years ago and then abandoned. Yves and his brother, Eric, got rid of the old plastic, dug the hole a bit deeper and covered it with new plastic. Then they filled it with water and left it for a few days.

Concerned that that's the state in which they intended to leave it, I encouraged them to go get stones and plants to put in and around it. They weren't convinced, so one day while Yves was at work, I surprised him by buying a load of pebbles and soil, and I put the finishing touches around it. They were convinced after that! Phew.

The following day we bought lots of flowers, including pink water canna, lucky bamboo, dahlia rose, marigolds and two laurel rose buses (pink and white). Since then, we've expanded our garden to include parsely, basil, mint, lavender, espelette chillis and rockmelons. All of which are thriving, I'm happy to report.

September 2005

Something is eating my plants. This baffled me for a couple of weeks and last night I went out with the torch, to dump used tea leaves on my basil, only to find all of my plants covered in slugs! They were having a hell of a feast, too. Summoning up all of my courage, I picked the slugs off, one by one, with my bare hands. Eww. What revolting, cold and slimy buggers they are. Tonight I am going to buy slug repellent for my poor little plants.

On another note, I've been spotting some pretty interesting birds in the garden. A couple of weeks ago I saw my first ever Huppe. I was sitting up in bed reading (I had a cold) and I saw this strange creature walk past my bedroom window. I jumped up and ran outside, quietly of course, to take a photo, but it was a bit of an elusive character, so the best I can do is point you to Google and suggest you do an image search. And today, I came home and was collecting my laptop from the loungeroom when I spotted a red headed woodpecker walking about in the grass. When he saw me watching him, he jumped up onto a tree and assumed the traditional woodpecker stance that no other bird seems to do and so I thought I'd look up woodpecker to see if I had guessed right. Lucky guess! :)