Welcome to Edith and Marc's new blog all about our life here in South Arm, Tasmania. What can you expect to read here? We'll tell you about what we've been doing, life in general here in Tassie, birds, our cats, and of course Edith's pregnancy (35 weeks so far) and the soon to arrive new member of our little family unit. I may also subject you to my musings with regards to the state of the world, the state of my mind and whatever else I feel like since this is my (I mean OUR) blog.

Where is Tasmania? Well, it's not in Africa (you're probably thinking of Tanzania). Tassie is the island state to the south-east of Australia.Where is South Arm? Just across the Derwent River from Hobart about a half hour drive from the cbd. Here is a Google Earth pic of South Arm:



If you've got Google Earth installed you can actually see our property (well not really our property since we rent...). It is 7.5 acres right on the beach. Right now as I sit at my desk I can look over the monitor and see the water and Tinderbox on the opposite shore. Life is good.

We moved to Tassie nearly three years ago from Montreal, Canada and moved here in South Arm back in May. We moved out of the City and chose to live in a more rural area just because we could. I mean, where else in the world would we be able to afford to live on such a huge beachfront property in such a massive house and only 30 minutes from the city? If you know of such a place, let me know! Here is a picture of our house seen from the paddock (Australian for a huge field):

In the foreground, the little shed is in our soon to be veggie patch. Actually, this afternoon I'll be going out to plant our spinach, endive, celery, broccoli, dill, chamomile and sage. If I have time I may even plant a patch of shallots and spring onions. So far this season, I've only gotten the garlic in but our hope is to have a really large garden which I'd like to run year round. I'll keep you updated with pictures and if I get around to it I may even draw up the garden plan in Visio and post it. Here is me examining the garlic patch about a month ago:

One of the issues we've been struggling with about the blog we've been meaning to start for ages is what language to publish in. You see, we are both from Québec and prior to our life in Tassie our day to day language was French. At home, at work, and out and about in town. But if we write in French then none of our English friends in Canada, the US, Australia or wherever will be able to read us. And what about our European friends: German, Spanish etc? We had thought of having an English and French blog with translated posts but this seemed like a way of killing the project before it even got off the ground. And besides "Notre vie dans le Bras" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. We think pretty well everyone is able to understand English and like it or not English is the lingua franca so English it is. However, feel free to post in the comments section in whatever language you want. As we go forward, we will see how things evolve and we may choose to publish in French sometimes and English the rest.

That's about it for now! We will try and post a few times a week. In closing, here is a picture of Edith which I took on Fakarava in French Polynesia when we were there in June: