Orchids and Aupairs

Once again, we return to the Garden of Luxembourg, one of my favorite subjects in Paris. I happened to wander through it after a heavy Sunday lunch with the Sarah Lawrence Program at the restaurant Parc aux Cerfs. It was a beautiful day, one of the last true days of summer. Paris seemed acutely aware of this, and people flocked to the parks, taking advantage of the sunshine to don their summer clothes before it was too late.
That weekend, I was still in the middle of my apartment search and hadn't planned to do anything else, but a sign advertising a tour of the garden's greenhouses caught my eye. The line didn't look too long, and with three hours to kill before my next apartment visit that evening I figured I had the time.

The greenhouses of the Garden of Luxembourg are open only once a year, during the weekend of the Journées du Patrimoine. They are a very popular visit, as you can see here, but people wait very patiently in line, taking their time to appreciate each individual greenhouse full of flowering plants.

The garden's greenhouses are famous for the orchid collection they house, the largest in Europe I believe. The orchid collection dates to 1838, when the doctor of the emperor of Brasil presented 30 or so species to the Faculté de médecine de Paris, then located south of what is now the Jardin de Luxembourg. This collection grew to include over 1,200 species. When the school of medicine was closed, the Senate agreed to take on the collection, and built a greenhouse specifically for the purpose of housing the plants. Today the collection includes 10,000 pots covering 150 genera, or more than 1,350 different cultivars, hybrids, and species of tropical orchids.

Orchids aren't the only thing contained in the Senate's greenhouses; they also supply the Jardin de Luxembourg's ever-changing flowering plants.

The garden also offers classes in horticulture, for both students and interested gardeners. After the greenhouses was a beautiful display of the different pear and apple varieties grown in the garden. There were many old European varieties and even some American ones whose names I recognized, like "Winter Banana"(1870).

On my way out I stopped to admire the little sailboats floating merrily on the fountain in front of the Senate building. Children wielding long sticks leaned in to reorient their boats towards the center of the pool.
I ended up visiting 2 apartments that evening, one of which I nearly ended up taking, but then I got a message from greataupairs.com, a website I'd signed up with but hadn't really expected to find useful. A woman named Régine Goury was looking to replace her au pair, a young American woman who, after 6 years with the family, had found love and was returning home to the states. The 2 boys, aged 10 and 14 were old enough to take care of themselves and the family was looking not for a full-time au pair, but someone to continue the kids' English lessons. In return, the rent would be free. It sounded like the perfect situation. Not paying rent would be a huge relief financially, and I did have time after work to dedicate to a second job. We arranged to meet that Monday to see if we could work something out.
I met Régine and her two boys, and found them to be perfectly nice. I still had to meet the father and visit the room (still occupied by the current aupair), but feeling somewhat confident about the situation I let the apartment owners I had been in contact with know that I had found something else. That was the hardest part, as they all wanted to know right away whether or not I was going to take their apartment. A week later, the stress was over. I met the father, Vincent, saw the chambre de bonne (maids quarters) that I would soon occupy, and received a contract by email from Régine (she's a lawyer).
I moved my suitcases across Paris Friday, September 28th after returning the keys to the studio in the 13th to Amandine. The previous aupair had left just that afternoon, so the family hadn't yet had the time to clean or even change the sheets, but I didn't care. The next morning I would be heading to Belgium for the weekend to see my beloved host family. All I needed was a bed to sleep in. Besides, I'd brought my own sheets...