When we were newlyweds many years ago, we rented apartments for a couple of years. Then in the early fifties we found a real house to rent.  Or at least the first floor of  a  brick house.  It had a screened in side porch, hard wood  floors, bedroom,bath,kitchen and dining room.  We were so excited; to us it was so beautiful.  It had a fairly large yard.  We moved in in September.

There was an apartment upstairs and the whole house had only one thermastat which was downstairs.  This meant we had to pay the heating bill for both the downstairs and the upstairs apartment.  That seemed of no consequence to us when we moved in in September.

The weather was nice and I was so excited about the yard.  I bought l00 tulip bulbs and planted them around the yard border.  I imagined how beautiful they would be when spring came, discounting the money I had to spend for them..

October passed and then  came a cold November. It proved hard to keep the larger downstairs warm without getting the small upstairs too hot. The couple upstairs were  forced to open the windows to be comfortable.  They often went to work and left the windows open.  Up went the heating oil  bill.  For November it went up to three hundred dollars.  In the early fifties that was a tremendous amount for a young couple with only starter jobs.

So in December, we moved into a duplex.  We had a large aquarium with a large variety of tropical fish.  During the move , I was afraid they'd die from cold during the move so I put the fish in a large fish bowl with the aquarium heater to keep them warm.  Overnight the heater misadjusted;  in the morning we had cooked fish. All our beautiful fish were dead. 

Our beautiful house was becoming a nightmare , especially considering we had to leave my l00 newly planted tulips in the frozen ground.  I never knew if they bloomed  in the spring.