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hi, i'm ash!
Creator of the New Travel & Design Series, 'OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES.'
Travel writer & host, cultural explorer, and architecture & interiors freak.
Meet ash >
I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈
I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈
The Newsletter
Every week, we're exploring global culture through the lens of the home. From floorplans to fixtures, we examine how houses are built, designed, and decorated around the world (with a side of sass, of course!)
The Podcast
The only podcast where we pass on the pyramids and poke around in the plumbing. I’m Ash, and I'm, exploring the strange, smart, and wonderful ways houses are built, designed, and decorated around the world.
The Books
A new series of OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES books designed to help you try on a new life in different places around the world—by getting to "go behind closed doors" inside local homes to discover what it's really like to live there.
I feel this to my bones. I’m in a war with a skunk who wants to settle under the porch next to my bedroom window, a family of foxes that have infiltrated the shed, and what seems to be an ant hill in the front garden that could rival an African termite mound. Apparently I need to buy some coyote pee and a butt ton of cinnamon to stock my arsenal for war.
Sometimes that seems like forever ago, sometimes it seems like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like I have lived one hundred different lives—every year a brand-new one to try on.
Same, Ash. SAME.
This new Ash needs her own country-livin’’ sitcom! 😂 We ended up making peace with our yard groundhogs (oh, those babies are adorable)! They live rent-free in the corner of our yard, and they’ve been fed well all summer – – bananas, melons, strawberries — all the stuff we intend to eat quickly, but a lot of it goes south (they picked a good poroperty for their den). 😁 We love our personal Disneyland, filled with cute furry little creatures — we even like seeing black snakes slither through every once in awhile (they dine on critters you don’t want in your house). 🐍 Speaking of snakes, please tell the person who praised that orange blob’s debating skills that voting has been officially changed to Wednesday, November 6th! 👻
We don’t have groundhogs but we do have snakes here in Australia and spiders the size of dinner plates. I’m blasé to the snakes – even had a huge one mosey through our house last year and wedge itself in the new bathroom – no biggie. They move on and like you say – eat less desirable creatures. Huntsman spiders, on the other hand, I’m not totally cool, calm and collected around. A lot of shrieking and yelping as I bravely try to catch and release.
🕷️ Spiders the size of dinner plates? O.M.G.!!!! I Think Australia wins the scariest animal award for those that slither, swim, and web it up! … I HAVE to look up the spider now! Wish me luck 🍀 and sweet dreams 🌙 🤣
We do have creepy crawly slithery type creatures but it’s very rare to be bitten by a snake and rarer still to die from snake bite or even spider bite. They mostly try to keep out of our way. I used to feel sorry for international visitors who were terrified of our nature – agreeing with the view that our wilderness is fearful .. until I remembered that in the northern hemisphere you have big, wild animals with teeth and claws that will literallly stalk you and EAT you for dinner! 😅
I’d love to watch Mother Nature and her amazing creatures, but let’s keep the stalking to a minimum—tee hee! 😉
I can vouch for the Huntsman being the size of a dinner plate. I bicycled the outback and tented, and in the mornings the tent was covered in spiders. Had to bash the tent to scare the spiders away before venturing out. Found many spiders, especially the smaller red backs and white tails in my clothes and panniers, and appear on my dinner plate by falling from out from my hair! I can tell you I was not cool, calm or collected ether, mostly screaming my head off and running around like my pants were on fire!
Spiders in your hair! Yikes! But how wonderful you cycled through the outback! It’s like no place on Earth isn’t it?? We did a trip a few years ago to Uluru. Not on bikes. I was struck by the softness and femininity of the desert. Harsh, yes, but the subtleties of the flora and the colours of the sand and sky and sunsets was magical. We did not experience spiders though. Huntsman are terrifying but harmless. Redbacks and white tails? I draw the line.
Yes agree, the Outback of Aussy is an amazing place. I loved it. After getting used to the vast array of the insect, spider and snake world at there, I relaxed and enjoyed everything the Outback offered. We had birds of all kind, buggies, colourful parrots and other birds sit on our handlebars and perch on our helmets as we peddled, so amazing. they flew along with us, it was display of colour. I loved hearing the Laughing Kookaburra and other songbirds in the mornings, and we had races with the Emus, such fun 🤩 I even had a chance at a range to ride an Emu, now that was an experience to be hold. You had be light enough to be able to do it, I was only 49kilos at the time. So vivid wonderful memories, must go back there again, it’s in my travel plans.
Sometimes we need our roots tore up. For real. ❤️
Happy Sunday Ash!
Did you get the Rat Zapper? You can buy them on Amazon. You know my story with rats in the walls so I feel you. Hearing the scraping and scratching in the dark feels like your living in an Edgar Allen Poe Novel…freaks me the hell out!
Question? Where did the Clang noise come from? What that the car scrapping down the road?
Favorite line:
“Isn’t it fascinating how two people can see the same thing and interpret it so differently?
Reality is constantly being negotiated.”
Now go kill the beast!
xoxoxo
I remember planting flowers in the ground with my friend, and she told me to gently pull the small root ball apart. When they’re in the pot, the roots grow in that shape, in a circle, and they’ll continue to do that until they strangle themselves. Even when they’re in the ground and there’s all this room, they can’t get out of that shape.
Then they die.
If you pull the roots apart, they learn to expand and grow further, and the plant flourishes.
Anyway, nice choice on the mums. Love the red ones! 🌺
Thanks for sharing this re the roots of plants, now I know why some of my baby shoots die. One learns something everyday!
You suffered the cock roaches of Costa Rica! That must prepare you for any kind of horror country life throws at you. Also I’m busting to know how Eggs got his name?!?
I caught that too. This one sentence disabused me of the idea of ever visiting Costa Rica. I’ve battled the palmetto bugs (<<