Six months on ...

Lots growing there :o)))

nods, I should maybe trim the lavender at least back a bit, but I usually work on the principle that the less I do, the fewer mistakes I make! I've had to water them a few times, when it hasn't rained for a couple of days, but apart from that, I've done basically nothing. I should, gardening is an interactive hobby, after all! But now I'm keeping an eye on the sky and must be ready to whiz them under cover at the first sign or hint of snow.

Are any of the plants in the photo above frost tender? I can't see any that are. Ives, Hechuras, Lavenders won't come to any harm with a bit of snow. You don't want a couple of feet of it on them obviously but a few inches won't kill them, just the opposite, as many alpine plants, for example, spent 6 months under a foot or more of snow & are none the worse for it. In fact the snow gives them protection from cold winds & hard frosts.

I'd be more worried about days of temps below freezing than snow. Those are the days when the damage is done as the constant freezing of their roots in such a small amount of soil is in a pot is what kills them.

I avoid anything not labelled "fully hardy", though the sedums I bought a couple of months ago are looking very sorry for themselves, so I've put them in the greenhouse. The Lavenders are French, and the online advice said that they didn't like frost etc. The pots are too big for me to get many of them into the greenhouse, but I've put a few in, the rest will have to take their chances.

I've also moved my roses in - they're all small and spindly, so maybe they should have been moved much earlier, but I wasn't in a do-anything mood for the past few months.

I bought some fleece sheets; the instructions say to lay over the plants and secure, but that's for plants in the ground, which is more usual. I don't know how effective the fleece will be over pots - it might keep the snow off but not the cold out, as it can get in at the sides.

I read about "winterising" (horrible word!) pots by lining the insides with bubble-wrap; leave the bottom, it said, to allow drainage, just do the sides. I meant to try it, but fogot in my last planting session. I suppose it'd work just as well on the outside. Or maybe I could spread fleece around the front and sides of the pots as well as over them - I've still got two packs of fleece.

Last year I was completely taken bu surprise by the snow; it was a couple of hours before I thought, Hey, I've got plants ouside now! and went to check them. I screaped the snow off, as much as I could. I had no fleece or anything; all i could think of were vacuum bags (the kind you put clothes in, roll to get the air out of, to take less room in your case when yoiu go on holiday - I'd bought stacks to try to minimise bulk when packing for the move) - so I put those over what plants I had - and one plant, that was too big for that, I covered with a zipped plastic cover that I'd bought a double blanket in.

Doubt any of them did much for warmth, but at least they kept the snow off - but any damage would have been done already, as they'd been snowed in ovenight.

But I've got a few more plants since then! so I think I need to think about "blanket" coverage - so to speak

The problem that we who grow most/all of our plants in pots is that they have such a small volume of soil that they freeze quite quickly. So even plants that are normally full hardy died on us because the roots are frozen. They don't have the possibility of growing down deeper to escape the freezing action of frost & wind.

2 or 3 degrees below freezing occasionally won't do them any harm but when you get days & days in a row of sub-zero temps much, much lower than we are accustomed to, like we have had during the last two winters, that's what kills the hardiest of plants in pots but not necessarily in the ground.

Bubblewrap put around the pots should help a little, as will fleece, but keeping them, as much as possible, packed together will give a little added protection as well as making them that bit easier to cover.

And they can freeze in more than one dimension! It’s not only the soil surface that’s exposed – especially if the pot’s a bit small for the plant and its roots are near or touching the sides.

I always tried to group my indoor plants: read years ago that this helps the plants to support each other, creating a microclimate – if that’s the right word; micro something. Never had any outdoor ones to worry about before. The garden at DITO had raised beds that were big enough to insulate the plants – besides, they were of brick, which also must have helped.

The outdoor pots are as close together as I can get them, mostly to save space! But the 3-tier plant stands do allow cold to come up from below; maybe I can line the steps with something to help cut that down. I did think of “greengrocers’ grass” matting to disguise the stands, maybe that would help to insulate the bottoms a bit.

I read about double-potting; you plant as usual, then put the pot into a bigger one, with soil under, and then pack the sides with more soil, to act as insulator – though I think this was suggested to help stop plants drying out so fast. Or moss could be used, it said. Suppose either would act as cold insulation. But that’d almost double the space needed for as many pots as you have and as I want!

The snow last year took me by surprise; it was several hours before I thought, hey, I’ve got plants out there now! and went to check. I took a vid on my camera, and have only just converted that to stills, so I might post some later – slightly after-the-event, but still … it also shows how many plants I’ve acquired in the year since then.

I’ve fleeced one of the 4-tier mini-sheds, not very elegantly, but hope it helps – prob is there’s simply no room –most of the plants are too tall to get on the shelves unless I fold ‘em in half, which I don’t think would help them much.

This is one of the reasons I was thinking of large troughs: put the pots in them and soil all round, to be a large “double pot”. Still thinking about it – I have several plastic crates (ventilated for food-type) but actually getting round to making hypertufa to cover them with … well, actually, it’s how to make the drainage holes for them.

The instructions someone very kindly sent me are for using two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, the mixture in between: but one has to put corks on a board, make holes in the boxes, fit the corks in, the take the board off when the mixture’s set and drill the corks out. As I don’t have a drill …

I suppose that even plastic or polystyrene shells would need to have drainage holes which would have to be blocked while the mixture is drying and then drilled out (wonder if putting Clingfilm over the corks would help? Then the mixture would stick to the film, not the corks, which could be taken out and the film just pierced).

Anyway, the troughs take six weeks to set properly, and have to be kept dry all the time, which is another poser when you live in a one-bed flat with no garden shed worthy of the name!

Do you really want to go to all that trouble for a couple of troughs on your balcony?

I have 3 long white plastic troughs that came from the factory where I was working! I got them for free as they were defects. They have lived on my balcony for over 10 years! I fill & empty them twice a year so as to change the scene. I use bedding plants. There are no perennials/shrubs that can match bedding for such a small space. Anyway I LIKE changing them around twice a year, I don't have to use the same plants & can vary the bedding quite a bit. :-))

The double potting you mention I've heard of before. The outside pots would have to be at the very least an inch bigger ALL around - that means a pot 2" bigger than the original! That, as you well say, takes up a lot of room we just do not have. Besides which it would also mean A LOT OF FILLING! What do you do with the filling during the summer? At least if it were compost you could use it but that amount of compost to start with would be expensive. Other filling would have to be stored during the summer. Then the cost of the pots, & again their storage, need to be taken into account.

Microclimate is the right word! I also keep my plants as close together as I can.

" “greengrocers’ grass” matting" sounds like a really good idea, if you can get hold of it! As you say it may indeed act as an insulating later.

I'd be interested in seeing your "stills" from your video! :-)) Please make a blog with some of them.

I wouldn’t bother with making troughs for ordinary plantings!

I’ve long dreamed of miniature gardens – or dwarf, as I don’t think I’d get on with really tiny plants. I came across a site, Two Green Thumbs, that does truly miniature gardens, and they look at least a couple of steps down from my visual range – garden features ¼” tall!

I was thinking more on the lines of a mini-landscape, a self-contained environment, not just plants – “natural features”, different levels, a water feature if I can fit one in – all to scale and complete in and of themselves.

The plants would have to be big enough for me to be able to work with, so they’d need a bigger trough. The mini-conifers that I have were bought with that in mind. My prob has been what scale to work to – I was thinking 1:12, inch-to-foot, as an easy option.

I have several long narrow troughs, but that’d make for an unusual shape “landscape”, unless I put several troughs together to form a square. And I could raise each trough slightly higher than the one in front of it, to give a change of level (that was one reason I bought the “steps” plant stand – but the troughs are just too wide to go on, grrr). But you don't get straight lines in nature, so it'd look artificial even if they did fit.

*s* I want my own woodland, and if I can’t have a full-size one I’ll have to settle for a scaled-down version.

And I don’t think just the plastic would be very thermal in cold weather – “stone” would be much more insulating.

I had thought to leave the plants in the pots in the trough; at least until I found the layout that I liked most, and maybe even after – then any plant could be removed without disturbing any of the others; a sick plant could be replaced, or a new plant put in. Of course, as plants grew, the pots would need to get bigger, but maybe by then I’d have found the right combination of plants to be able to plant them into the trough and their roots would have more room.

Besides, with miniature landscapes, I could have several different themes: I’ve seen, apart from the conifer “landscape”, a Japanese-theme and rose gardens, both formal and informal layout. Each garden could get rotated so there’d be plenty of variety!

Besides which, if I learn how to make hypertufa, I could have a go at making ornaments and display items, not to mention my own pots, exactly the size and shape that I want; I love crafts that are messy and get your hands dirty!

I’ve also dreamed of making my own water feature, since I can’t find one that I like that I can afford. I love waterfalls, but the ones for sale are too long (and, to be honest, too boring). A near-vertical cascade would take up much less room.

I’ve designed (well, drawn on paper!) a “cliff” that would have several small cascades down the face, some leading to feed other cascades and some falling all the way down – the different heights of drop would make different notes, and would [hope!] combine harmoniously. The bottom pool would be a lagoon leading into a cave at the foot. With plants to scale around it, of course!

I think that one of the points of double-potting was that it also helped to stop the plants drying out so much in summer; you could saturate the filling material, and as it evaporated it’d help moisten the air around the plant. But as all my potting compost has to be brought home by hand, on foot, or at least on a shopping trolley, and I can only manage one sack at a time, I tend to be scrooge-like in my use of it.

I’ll have a go at sorting the snow video into stills – I had to convert the format to get Windows Movie Maker to accept it at all, now I need to cut it into individual frames. *s* easy if you say it quickly!

"... as all my potting compost has to be brought home by hand, on foot, or at least on a shopping trolley, and I can only manage one sack at a time, ..."

That's something I can sympathize with as I have to do exactly the same! :-))

How big is your balcony that you could "squeeze" all that into it? Ours is only 3m x 1.5m!

You are VERY ambitious! I had never, at any moment, ever thought of doing anything different from the set up I've used for the last 11 years! I just like to rotate the plants I use during the seasons. I shan't be making any changes, other than possibly getting rid of at least the 2 biggest golden Conifers.

*s* and as I walk wiht a stick, I only have one hand to drag the trolley with. I did try to bags once, but only once - that was very nearly too much for me. I've bought a four-wheel flatbed trolley, so I might be able to bring more home in future - if I only have to push it, rather than support the weight ...

I did a scale plan of the garden, which was one of the firt pics I posted, I think. It's the width of the flat, whatever that is - the lounge side is two metres, and the bedroom side, three metres "long".

Your balcony probably doesn't run the full width of your flat, so I'd say my space would be roughly twice as big as yours? but you've got a damn sight more in yours than I have in mine! though, to be fair, I've only been doing this for about six months - the tables didn't go in till May.

I'm probably being too amabitious, and should scale down a bit, if not a lot! I have such dreams, but when it comes down to making them real, well ... I won't know if I can or not until or unless I try.

Still, dreaming is good - it kept me going all those garden-less years.

You are quite right, the balcony doesn't run the width of the flat, only half as you deduced, Sherlock Fran! LOL! :-D)

Our balcony is about 3m long so it is similar to the bedroom side of your balcony then. We have a 3m long kitchen window with sill on which I have a double tier of 6" pots with Amaryllis & a few other very small plants in 3" pots. I've also filled the two bedroom windows with double tiers of Amaryllis in 6" pots!

sigh, my kitchen window is about 2 foot wide, and half tucked behind the fridge - and even were it longer, and get-at-able, it's only about three inches deep. same with all o ther windowsills - just about big enough for tiny pots, but I tend to start bigger, except when I repot my Spider plants - any bit that falls off gets repotted, on the off-chance that it'll take.

In my old flat, at one time I had almost a hundred sprigs, potted when they fell off the parent at repotting time - I used to grow them to give them away - in plastic or foam cups, cos the pot never comes back, even if you do ask.

*s* you could have a go at miniature plants on your windowsill - I've seen some complete miniature gardens in the *saucer* for a pot or planter!

I measured our windowsills & found they were little wider than yours at 4". Most of the year there are plants in the majority of the windows, though in winter is when they are most full of plants, mostly Amaryllis!

In one of our two bedrooms there are two bulbs with flower stems half their final height! I noticed just yesterday that many more had buds just peeking out of the necks of the bulbs!

I could easily have had many 100s of Spider plants if I'd rooted all the little plantlets that hang on the end of the long stolons they produce. I love the tiny fragile white stars of flowers they produce at almost any moment of the year. I have a big plant in the kitchen that's sat there for at the very least 5 or 6 years & produces 100's of baby plantlets every year!

You can see one photo I uploaded in my photos:

http://www.growsonyou.com/photo/slideshow/108171-spider-plant

I don't seem to have much luck with indoor flowers: I've tried Peace Lilies at least three times and not succeeded with any of them. I suppose foliage plants are a bit more robust.

I started putting the Spiders outdoors in the summer; one book said it would harden them, and it certainly produced thicker stems. I had a couple in the DITO garden, but it snowed a couple of years ago and it was several days before I went to the centre and tried to revive them. For a while, the big one seemed to recover even from that, but it had been damanged too much.

saw the photo, thanks - and wow! that's rather huge

Although that photo was taken a couple of years ago the same plants exists in the very same place, it hasn't been moved from there. But I think its trying to tell me something- its roots are climbing out of the pot it's been in for the last 5 years!

They can stand some changes in temps but they aren't frostproof! The plant I have was rescued from an outdoor display just the day before the council gardeners pulled them all up so as to prepare the way for the autumn/winter bedding.

This has been the only time I've dug up a plant from a council display! I knew that within a day or two they would be pulling up the summer bedding but it surprised me that the very same day but just a few hours later they were all pulled up to go to the council recycling centre to be turned into compost!

lol it's probably telling you that it needs a bigger pot! amazed me when I finally repotted one that had started showing its roots above the surface: most of the soil was gone, the majority of pot content was root.

All mine are by windows, no option at the moment until I get ornagised and can have other places to put them - as I have the lounge windows open at night, just a crack, to air the room overnight (hate going into a room in the morning that's got yesterday's cigarette smoke still in it!) and thebedroom windws are always open at least a couple of inches (unless the noise from upstairs is just too much) so the Spiders get plenty of "outside air-conditioning".

It's a shame that council gardeners have to dispose of plants that could well go on for months longer - perhaps we should all contact our local councils and ask for the plants that they dig up, if we have, or know of, other places to plant them - care homes, community gardens, and the like. Sure the councils wouldn't object, if it didn't involve any extra work for their staff - why should it matter to them if a discarded plant is dumped or recycled?

"It's a shame that council gardeners have to dispose of plants that could well go on for months longer -"...

I couldn't agree with you more! No doubt there will be plenty of other GoYers who feel the same way! This is especially true of the summer bedding. It is planted out beginning of May but pulled up in October - at the latest. Lots of the plants could carry on till the first frosts. Nevertheless the gardeners have to get the winter/spring flowering plants into their flowering positions to give them time to establish themselves before the hard winter begins.

If they had left them much later in 2009 & 2010 they wouldn't have had the time to get established before we had those two "once-in-a-lifetime" winters that we had. This year, with one particular newspaper shouting out in foot-high bold type on its front page that we were in for the coldest winter since records began (like they shouted out we were in for the hottest summer on record last year!!!), nobody would take any chances on planting much later than they would other years.

The winter has been very mild - so far - this year but it could all change in a few weeks time & we could be experiencing Siberian cold again before the winter is over!

Maybe we could start a GoY campaign to get everyone to at least try to recycle council plants! Few of us would be able to take more than a fraction of the plants that are discarded from mass plantings, but those who know of a communal garden or school garden could make them aware of the freebie opportunities.

winter hasn't really started yet: I've long thought that the seasons should be realigned to fit what's actually happening, rather than the traditional seasons - winter would then be from December to April! Those "once in a lifetime" events are happening a lot more often these days (of course, they don't say whose lifespan they're using to measure! Mayflies??).

"Since records began" is only two hundred or so years, I think - not exactly representative of a weather system that's been going on for several thousand, at least! But the weather patterns do seem to have changed even in one lifetime: I can remember going to church on Crhistams Eve and there were piles of snow on the edge of the road where they'd been cleared.

This flat is a lot more thermal than my old one (I used to have two duvets on the bed, one under, one over, so I was very snug - and I needed to be!) but last night a thin blanket was about as much as I needed, even wtih the windows open a couple of inches. Of course, once the snow etc kicks in I'll need a bit more - but I only started putting the heating on a week or so ago.

We can adapt to the fast changing seasons better than any other living thing on the planet. Being able, to a greater or lesser degree, to control our own environment means we can go to the tropics one day & the next to the Arctic with little more than a change in clothing. No other form of life can do that. But what I really mean is that we can warm or cool our homes, maintain our own personal comfortable temperature in which to live. We are better prepared to resist fluctuations in our surrounding than animals or plants. These need many years of small changes to adapt to new surrounding.

Plants are still accustomed to the winters starting with the falling light levels which affect them much more than temperature changes therefore they respond to rising light levels also more than temps. That's why we get frost damage to sensitive plants, they can't adapt to changes like we do. Even animals are often taken by surprise & can die when the temperature is outside the range they are adapted to.

I had to laugh & concede you all the reason in the world when you said:

"Those "once in a lifetime" events are happening a lot more often these days (of course, they don't say whose lifespan they're using to measure! Mayflies??)."

It does seem like that at times!

You are a lot more fortunate with your flat then than we are with ours. We have double glazing but I don't think we have cavity wall insulation - I'm not even sure we have cavity walls at all! In fact I very much doubt it! Comparatively we seem to be better off than other tenants, as some of the flats above us seem to be worse off than we are. I've been to a few meeting our housing association has called just for the tenants of the 25 flats that make up our block. I've heard tales of condensation & mould & cold that made me wonder if we are really living in the same block of flats!

We have been using our heating for months. There were days during November that we didn't put it on but there are plenty more days when we do need it. In our living room there is almost always a cold draft coming from somewhere that we have never been able to pinpoint. Although it seems to come from the door that leads out onto the balcony we can never seem to stop it - even with extra isolating strip around the door & its frame. I put extra on a couple of months ago but I had to remove some of it again as it was practically impossible to lock the door with the key. It would remain shut but differences between interior & exterior pressures sometimes caused the door to open! Being as we live at ground level it's unacceptable to leave the door without locking it with the key. Last year I thought, for a short while, I'd found the cause but it was short lived as I soon discovered the draft continued. I've blocked every possible opening I could find but it seems to make no difference so I sit here at the computer with a blanket doubled over several times across my lap & knees!

Don’t know whether our adaptability will eventually turn out to be a blessing or a curse; we’ll have to come back in half a million years and see! Plants evolve much slower on a much longer timescale: that’s how archaeologists can work out prehistoric climates, by what plants grew, or what insects flourished.

For the last few years, I’ve noticed that trees drop their leaves at their traditional time, then grow them back and drop again later, sometimes even a third time before they decide that this really is winter this time and keep their branches bare.

Not only depth of change, but duration; I have a documentary on the “big freeze” of the 1960s, can’t remember the year exactly. Winter lasted from October to March, snow on the ground all that time. Someone said that it was totally quiet in their village because all the birds had died very quickly.

If climate change succeeds in shutting down or diverting the Gulf Stream further south, we’re gong to have North-Canadian climate all year round. None of us, humans included, are going to be able to thrive under those conditions. No farming cos there’s snow on the ground all year; transport in chaos – winter heating bills would go on throughout the year, and if the figures for winter-hypothermia deaths seem high now …!

As the earth cooled there’d be more glacial formation and eventually the Gulf Stream would switch back on or come back north, but can’t remember if they said that’d take a thousand years, or twelve thousand. Sort of academic for you and me, either way!

I’ve lived in previous flats that were wind tunnels combined with refrigerators: why *do* they insist on putting radiators under windows or in the hall right by the front door?? I know the theory is that any draughts that get in will be warmed, but from my experience it just means that the warm air gets out before it has a chance to do me any good. (If I had my way, people who build “social” or “cheap” housing – and the people who commission them – should be made to live in them for at least a year: then they’d know what they were condemning other people to live in.)

I try to leave the heating until the last possible moment, or even a bit longer – once it goes on, it’ll keep going on, so I try to put it off as long as possible; it’s only when I’m sitting here with t-shirt, shirt, jumper, body-warmer and dressing-gown on and still shivering that I submit. Prob is I can only get one pair of joggie bottoms on! *s* got an old pair of thermals I used for camping, must see if I can find them again.

Have you tried a door curtain? They do make thermal curtains for front doors, would work for any other kind of door. Or even a thick-ish curtain or piece of material that would reach the floor and overlap the frame; depends on where the door is located along the wall, brackets and a rail to pull the curtain back out of the way might work. I have an old door curtain that I’m going to have on the back door; my old flat had a narrow hall and the rail went across, this one’s got the door sort of in the side of the hall, no way to put a rail up unless I get a U-shaped one. Besides, being an internal corridor *should* need less draught-proofing than a door leading directly outside (though judging by the way the wind was whistling through the letter-box last night, not so sure about that!).

In the old flat I used to put Clingfilm around the window frames to try to cut draughts down; didn’t always work but at least gave the illusion of working. This place has no air-bricks, so every window has a spinner vent in it (one of which can’t be closed, so it was out with the Clingfilm again last year) as well as ventilation strips along the tops, which at least can be closed. But don’t want to be so successful that I make it hermetically sealed!

I have to keep my back door locked as the only way of keeping it closed: when I first moved in, I found that though there was a catch on the door, there was no handle on the outside – I found this out by being outside when the door closed and I couldn’t open the damn thing! Luckily it was summer and the kitchen window was open, so I was able to reach in and open it from the inside. If it had been winter, or if I simply hadn’t had the window open, I’d be out there still, unless someone heard me yelling – and then the council would have had to break down the front door to get in to open the back door. Honestly, who designs these places??? After I reported this, the council put a handle on the outside – but they also took the catch off, so now I can open the door from the outside but there’s no need because it won’t stay shut unless I keep the bolt on it.

We don’t have a Tenants’ & Residents’ Association here, which very much surprised me: when viewing places, I always ask if there’s a TRA, cos I’m keen on them: only way us small fry can get to together to raise issues in a loud enough voice for the council to take notice. Besides, it’s a way of meeting neighbours, if nothing else. Apparently they’ve got to get one going this year because of some regulation or other. Don’t know if they had one before and it fell over, or if they never did.

*s* I use leg warmers, mostly scrunched down around my ankles to keep them warm, but in need, pulled all the way up, very comfy!

Here a housing association took over all the council's stock of houses - the same year we arrived back from Spain - which was fortunate or we probably wouldn't have got a flat in such a relatively short time.

We were living in a tent for 3 months on a camping site outside the town. Only when winter was practically upon us, & the law forbids people living in tents after October, did we eventually get a place. We liked this flat right from the start! Most people in the UK would hate the idea of living in a flat but for all our married live, except during the 4 years we lived in the UK at the end of the 1970s, we have always lived in a flat! In fact those 4 years were the only time my wife has EVER lived in a house!

This place gets a lot of sunshine, (when the sun is out!), it has big windows & we get sunlight through the 3 sides of the flat that are on the outside. Only the entrance hall doesn't get any natural light. The "walls" of the kitchen & living room that overlook the street are windows from them middle to the ceiling so we get lots of light. Our living room also has a 2nd, much smaller, window where we have a Dragon tree.

The windows in the living room are covered by thermal curtains from wall to wall & from ceiling to floor. We bought them our first winter here. So, except for one year, when we but up Venetian blinds, these curtains have always covered the windows. A few years ago my wife sewed some new curtains which we bought cloth for & put them over the top of the thermal ones. So we have double curtains in the living room. Even with all that weight there are times when we can see the curtains "breathing" as it were. You can see the curtain, particularly where it covers the door to the balcony, swell up & then deflate! I just can't find where the air gets in to do that! For some reason it doesn't seem to be doing that so much this year. Even though we have had almost gale force winds the curtains are hardly moving - yet still I feel the cold draft across my knees! It's not just my imagination either because my trousers are also cold to the touch! I can't move the computer from here either as there is just no other place to put it! So the ol' blanket across the knees!

HAs or ALMOs are taking over all council housing stock, all over, Balcony – in some London boroughs there’s no “council housing” at all any more. There’s a significant difference between council and other “social” housing, mostly in the types of tenancy – council do “secure”, others mostly do “assured” – main difference seems to be how easy it is to evict tenants; councils need a court order.

Living in a tent, wow! Even for “only” three months, that’s still deserves a wow. [looking around me now, wondering how I’d fit all this in a tent!]

Living in a council property is still seen as a the bottom of the social scale, and living in a flat is the lower end of that – “council estate” carries definite overtones of squalid, deprived, crime-ridden areas occupied by social dregs, criminals and losers.

You must have been very lucky with your flat; they seem to offer “homeless” people the lowest of rubbish accommodation, probably on the principle of half a loaf … to have been offered a place that you’re still happy to live in [or fairly so] is amazing.

I prefer flats, because everything’s on one level: I’m not too hot on stairs these days. Well, I’d prefer a bungalow, then there’s no noisy neighbours upstairs! Though you could still get ‘em to each side. Grins, if I went up-market and called it “an apartment” no doubt that’d be better received by people who think longer words are posher.

When I was trying to get out of my previous flat they showed me at least eight other places; most of them were much worse than what I was trying to move out of! I’d specified “level access” because I was hoping to get a disabled scooter, but it’s amazing how many “level access” properties had steps … and a lot of those places (intended for two people) would have made rabbit hutches seem spacious.

I know that Tower Hamlets is severely overcrowded, and I know they’ve got to get rid of their rubbish housing stock, but still … if they’d let me transfer out of the area, or indeed out of London, they’d free-up more space.

My old flat had windows back and front; the main rooms faced east, which got me a lot of morning sun – my bed was right under the window, and I always slept with the curtains open, so in summer I’d only have to kick off the sheet to be able to sunbathe! Being on the 7th floor, I was above the trees so the sunlight was uninterrupted; I’d get a lot more sun here if there were no trees or flats across the green to block the light. The prob with both flats is that the rooms are long and narrow and the windows are in the narrow wall, so I need lights on at the other end virtually all the time – it’s 10 am now and I’ve got the light on at this end.

That’s the advantage of living on the end of a block; you have the extra wall to have windows in. But then you also get the draughts that you shelter the rest of the block from! Living in the middle of the block, one is insulated from both sides.

*s* one would think that the Window Tax was still in force, judging by the windows in some places! Titchy little squares in side walls, barely qualify as “light vents”. Smiles, when I win the lottery and design my own house, it’s going to be wall-to wall, floor-to-ceiling windows – and a glass roof, too!

The windows here are virtually wall-to-wall; the main ones that open start about waist-high and go almost all the way to the ceiling, with transoms underneath; same size in the bedroom, but no transoms. The bathroom is wrap-round, so no windows there, so it and the hall is always dark; the hall gets a bit of light at each end from the bedroom and lounge, but I need to keep a light on almost all day there too. All windows have “blackout” [more like grey-out] lined curtains wall-to-wall and down to the floor; when they’re closed, it’s like a wall of curtain.

I made some door curtains for my old place: Asda had cheap curtains, they were too short for the windows but too wide for the doors, so I cut ‘em and made them shorter and longer. Not very elegant, but they covered the doors; I had ‘em on curtain wire so they’d pull open. I want to get similar curtain-wire up at the doors here; net insect screens in summer and draughtproofing at other times.

That’s one hell of a draught you’ve got there, to get through double thermal curtains! Have you reported it? I had a visit from Age Concern to do some handyman stuff for me; I said about draughtproofing the doors, and he said the council will do that for free. They’re supposed to push energy-saving, after all, and should be able to do something for you.

When I was a kid we lived in a Nissen hut (semi-circular corrugated metal, two bedrooms, outside toilet and coal shed) – “temporary accommodation”, we were there eleven y ears. It was only when my younger brother turned 11, and was then counted as an adult for housing purposes, that we got rehoused – there would have been one adult male sharing a bedroom with two adult females. That was the first time we ever had stairs, and lol we went up and down ‘em all the time just for the novelty of it!

The curtains are NOT double thermal, they are one thermal & 1 normal placed over the thermal one. The draught doesn't seem nearly as bad this year as in past years & we have had lots of days with very strong winds. It maybe that the extra draft strip I put all around the door frame has helped.

Last year I went around the balcony door with a candle to see if I could pinpoint the source but no luck - yet I could feel a currant of cold air on the back of my hand! I get the impression that it comes down from the ceiling, inside the curtains, & then into the room from underneath them.

There have been times when you'd think they were alive & breathing when you see them swelling & deflating!!!

As I say it seems to be a lot better this year. Even so I have to have a blanket over my legs all the time I'm sitting here!

well, okay, thermal-plus-other.

My ususal draught-detection is to lick the back of my hand and move it around; damp skin is really sensitive to draughts.

Can you get pelmets? well, not exactlypelmets, but something coming down from the ceiling to cover the curtain-top ceiling gap? but that won't stop it coming in, it'd just direct it downwards.

We've been ahead of you for many years! We've had pelmets since moving in here 11 years ago!

*s*