General Chat

Good Morning Sue,

My tablet also died after very little use. My SIL who bought it on my behalf when I was in hospital is in the process of returning it, but it has to go back to Poland :-(

I agree about the gutter guards - why risk climbing up to clean the gutters when you don't have to - very sensible

Hello :-) I've missed Linda again. If you look in tomorrow Linda I'm sorry our FaceTime session came to an abrupt end. It looks like my tablet needs to go in for repairs. All I have is a blank screen :-(

We are just getting a quote at the moment for gutter guards around the gutters of our house. OH feels that the time has come when he needs to think about not climbing up ladders to clean out the leaves. I agree.

Goodnight Linda - sleep well,

I am off again, I will miss Sue again. Never mind :-D

Many houses in this village have a wood burner. My neighbour has one, but as you say Linda, there is a lot of fiddle cleaning them.

I enjoy a real fire, but mine is conventional, and only takes a few minutes to clean.

Wood burners are all the rage here, my daughter has one. I couldn't be bothered with it as it is to clean out all the time

I think there would be uproar and riots in the streets if ever such a law were to come into force here. :-|

What a crazy idea

Council are talking of putting a ban on using fireplaces and wood burners in Auckland on all houses built before 2005. This would mean all the old villas like I lived in as a child would have fireplaces as an ornament. We had fireplaces back to back one in the lounge and one in my parent's bedroom.

Christchurch has an anti fireplace policy which has been around for years.

I guess heat pumps will be doing very well out of this.

The new windows will have made a huge difference. You should save quite a bit of money over the winter.

This house is insulated as best as it can be. I had secondary glazing in the bay window in this room, that made a huge difference.

The radiators have switched themselves off now because the room is so well insulated. Our energy supplier has a good website where you can see your energy usage, ours is nineteen percent down since we had the new windows put in

Pots are very nice, but they are time consuming and need constant attention with watering and tidying up.
Hanging baskets are the same, but I don't do them anymore

I'm going to make coffee now - be back soon

The first thing I noticed about this house was when we arrived home late at night it was so warm. He said to me have you left a heater on, but the only thing that is on is the heated towel rail. Whereas our other house despite insulation top and bottom could still be cooler inside than out.

Re my landscape gardener... he is a young chap two doors up across from us. He had quite a business with several vehicles and then there was a down turn and he gradually sold them all and laid off his many workers (used to be all go over there at about 7am) His wife is high up in advertising and he has been involved in building a swimming pool behind their place, and doing their house up so has been home all the time and has helped us out as well (for a price of course).
We had concrete blocks and a little concrete piece of nothing very attractive that edged the garden.... he has taken all these and crushed them and put them behind his retaining wall behind the pool. He is a very busy lad. They have a pre-schooler named Georgia.

I didn't bother with the pots this summer as I knew I was going to be away and OH isn't into dead heading and watering them,so I only had a few geraniums in them. I will be able to do a better display next year

The ramp looks quite stark with nothing against it, well I think so.

The geraniums and lobelia are looking very sad now in the pots

The phrase "prettying it up" made me smile, you are an old softie at heart :-D

Yes I will. I want some heavy duty cable ties as well.

I want to secure troughs to the rails of the ramp to pretty it up for the Spring.
The lily tubs I had there have gone round the back now they've died off.

You had better ring him in that case, so he can get one tomorrow

My brother is coming on Saturday, so I may get him doing that. Which reminds me I want him to bring a bag of compost :-D

You need to tempt the boy from the village to come back and help you, or get your brother to fill the tubs up, then you can put the bulbs in

We had a warm air system in a bungalow that we had once. The system was hopeless and inefficient.

I know that warm air systems in North America are good and work very well.

I still haven't planted my tubs and pots up with bulbs.

Wish I hadn't bought so many bulbs now :-(