How did you come to live where you live?

I've always lived in Louisiana. In fact, the town I grew up in, Darrow, is only about 35 miles SW of where I live now. We ended up in French Settlement for several reasons, the main one being that my Mom moved here after my Dad and her divorced. In fact, my Dad also ended up living here too, go figure. When my husband hurt his back we wanted to get out of Baton Rouge where we were living. My Mom called one day and asked us how would we like to rent a house for $20 a month. I thought, yeah right Mom. The people who owned the house, a 110 year old Acadian house, only charged what there insurance was. My Mom went to church with the woman who was presently living there, so between the 2 of them they got the house for us. We lived there 9 years, then had to move. We stayed in another rental for 6 years until we were finally able to buy a place. We have 1.81 acres of land and a mobile home. My Mom also moved her mobile home on our property. It is down a dead in road and it's pretty quiet here, kinda lazy and laid back. I love it.

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Sharon

Phil. 4:13

Given that most of your forum members live in the States, I'd like to give a little tale of a small town in Australia, if you don't mid.

This may be lengthy, somewhat rambling, seemingly irrelevant to geneal gardening, fantasically romantic to some,and frankly dull to others.

My partner - unmarried wife of 18 years - and I moved to Castlemaine after a series of horrid share houses in Melbourne that sent us quite mad after dealing with dumb-a**ed students, drug-heads, losers and nice-but-can't-get-their-s***-together left-wing friends.

Castlemaine kind of happened by accident in the 70's when a bunch of hippies found free land in the overgrown bushy hills, 150KM north of Melbourne and started a few artist studios, built mud brick houses and started communes - I guess much like in Northern California.

Since then it's become a bit of a Mecca to the Melbourne alternative; but now if the barista don't know your personal style - well???

We moved here largely because there is an amazing cultural network, an ability to build community and find simple pleasures that we could not see possible in the city. We would not raise a family in the violent, crazy madness of the city.

My children berate me constantly for stopping and talking, just hanging out in the square, the market, the village, trading vegies - when all they want to do is to not be embarrassed by being seen with feral hippies!!!

There is a sense of fair trade here, a strong resonation with the traditional owners of the land (the Djaar Djaar Wraung people), our Mayor is a member of the Australian Greens, - last State Election, 35% of our town voted Green!)

Our single single biggest industry employer ( a pork processor) last year employed over 500 migrants from Sudan, which obviously stimulated demand for housing, increased retail spending etc. etc. etc.

Forgive my digression. Back to gardens. From April to November we can expect severe frost. From October to April we don't expect rain. Long term average rainfall is about 580mm per year (use your US converters), that's not much! We tend to design gardens with mediterranean plants, local native grasses, and succulents; we rely more on form, foliage, structure, associative response to architecture, colour and integral movement, than on particular 'garden styles'. We engage rather than respond.