Home & Garden

After the speculation on the perfidy of aphids in a recent column, I was feeling pretty certain that without my kindly delivery of OUTinPerth my lovely family would remain unaware of the significance of the sudden burst of appreciation for their company and the offer of culinary treats – and the strange correlation between such unprecedented behaviour and the onset of urgent major jobs in the garden. In describing the organic paradise I was creating, fuelled with free labour cunningly extracted from unwitting family members, I bargained without an appreciative reader telling Mother about said column. It turns out my mother knows how to use Google. Who knew? (more…)

I have a crush. She is sweet, warm, open and inviting and with her, I feel right at home. The first time we met, I dreamt about her. I awoke, and the thought of her lingered with me throughout my day. She is not exactly what I expected but she is a lovely surprise. The lady in question is a gorgeous three bedroom villa, with terracotta tiles, lots of windows and a little breakfast nook that opens onto a pebbled area via glass double doors. She doesn’t tick all of the boxes that my girlfriend and I had put down on paper but it doesn’t matter. She has that undeniable X factor. The question now is: will she set up home with us? (more…)

Spring Springs

Rain for the next three months I was told. Which – being a Leo and so suffering an entire childhood of rained out birthdays, and being a pessimist when it comes to weather and Fairday – I thought was a bit of sound forecasting. I was pretty sure we were in for a fabulous time for the garden, with lots of gentle precipitation neatly appearing every few days or so as the weather and the soil slowly warm up. (more…)

Although I wear a rock on my ring finger and have done for the past one and a half years, people have only recently noticed that my girlfriend and I are, in fact, building a life together. Yes, my beloved and I have decided to enter suburbia, til death or mortgage repayments do us part. Not that we aren’t eternally grateful to her uber patient mother, who has housed us through uni but there are times when five people in the one home is three too much. With much enthusiasm, we entered the land of real-estate agents and the home-open… (more…)

For those who love their gardens the recent stormy weather couldn’t be better — it almost feels like were having a real winter in Perth for the first time in many years — and while more boisterous and showy denizens of the garden spend this time of the year hibernating there are more subtle charms to be had for those who were busy burying bulbs at the end of summer. I’ve had jonquils flowering since the beginning of July which are just now being joined by a few early daffodils, and though now it’s too late to put in these particular bulbs there are others, including freesias, sparaxis, ixias and gladiolus which can be planted now for a spring showing. When bulbs finish flowering you should pick off the flower heads so that the plants don’t waste energy producing seeds, but let the leaves remain ‘til they wither so that the bulb (corm or rhisome) is strengthened for next year. (more…)

Mountains of Pleasure

From a chef’s perspective, nothing gets Sandro more aroused and moist than working with what he calls ‘the golden commodity’ (and we use that phrase as the perishable in question is worth more that gold itself!). Glorious, pungent, intoxicating and desirable, with a scent that seven out of ten women find sexually arousing… the deliciously ugly Truffle is truly one of the most sort after ingredients in the world. (more…)

In early June, the City of Perth voted to turn the Council-owned Gasworks building at 337 Wellington Street into artists’ studios. The decision was made in response to the inability of artists to afford such spaces in the CBD as a result of the property boom – as a result, Artsource have been given a lease for ten years at one dollar a year.

In combination with the Gasworks lease, McLean’s Laneway, next to the building, has been identified for upgrading, with the stated aims of the Council being to: (more…)

Applying for a rental property in the current Perth market can be a nightmare. While the competitiveness of the market has subsided a little from last year’s less than 1% vacancy, it can still be very difficult to secure a tenancy.

The current market is still extremely competitive, particularly in the $200-$300 bracket. This means that in most cases agents carry out group home opens. To have a chance of securing a tenancy it is best to make yourself available for these, as not many agents will make the home available for viewing a second time. (more…)

There’s nothing like rain to revive your garden, and April’s record-breaking rainfall is likely to leave your plants a little confused. Add to that the fact that morning temperatures are dropping below 10ºC, and we gardeners have a challenge in May. Our plants are going to slow down their growth; the weeds are going to love it; and those snails and slugs will be having a party. (more…)

I live in one of those horrifically designed houses from the 60s. A time when the height of interior design dictated that there should be turquoise carpet everywhere (even the kitchen), that home extensions should include hexagonal rooms, and that no lounge room could be complete without a holographic rose-in-vase still life. It was also a time where the correct orientation of a house was immaterial to DIY builders – thus the sweltering summer heat, which seems to be lingering into autumn, has been particularly unpleasant this year. (more…)