"You don't know the meaning of hard work . . ."

The title of this post is something my late m.i.l. once told me, because I found it hard to keep on top of all the ironing, tidying etc when I had 3 children under five and we were living in a house which needed total modernisation.  I think it was because I refused to iron the thick heavy cotton sheets she had given me . . .  Anyway, down the years, when I have collapsed into bed totally exhausted from all the work I have done - such as several consecutive days of 14 hours housework, painting, gardening  etc when we have a viewing due -  that little homily comes back to me.  Today was one of them.  I made a start on clearing the stable yard after I had listened to the Archers omnibus (whilst ironing material and starting to cut it up for the patchwork border on an applique wall hanging).  It had a winter's worth of leaves and twigs and half-rotted leaves turning to mud, plus lots of green moss, and it's a long time since I was last doing a work-out with a yard broom. Here it is before I started - and it was actually worse than it looks here!)

I had actually swept a few leaves into piles here, before thinking ah yes, before and after photos!  The hardest job was getting the grass (foreground) from the cracks in the concrete  and I had to concede defeat on the two biggest clumps, but I will go in with a spade with a sharper edge tomorrow.  All the leaves filled four barrowloads, now heaped under the Elderberry bushes at the bottom of the yard.  I finished it off by swilling it down with several buckets of water, sweeping after each bucketful.  After:

The pony stables are next - I did make a start on this one, and have swept all the leaves out, identified a lathe which needs to be taken by the scrap man next time one turns up (though they tend to hunt in packs - you don't see one for a year, and then three come with just days in between them!), moved out the remains of the old chair at the back (which has been waiting 35 years for my husband to restore), the pallet has gone to the woodshed and sundry boxes are earmarked for the Tip.  A bag of old sheets (well used dustsheets) are going the same way.

There are several mirrors hanging about the place and I want to take those to the Tip too, but my husband (in a cranky mood because of STILL working on the shower room, and now having to lay down to fix the wooden covers over the pipework, which has made his back and hips sore) huffily told me that "someone would want to recycle those, as mirrors are so expensive to buy" and they needed to go into auction.  Personally I don't think it's worth the bother of even cleaning them (guess whose name would be on THAT job?) let alone the time and fuel to take them for what they would fetch, but what do I know?  

More junk in the middle stable (how many empty cardboard boxes do we need?!) but a little bit of treasure as 3 Victorian solid brass wall light holders on the right . . .  But another mirror too (there were 6 in all, but one is a decent one), the remains of an upright piano - sundry bits of which ended up being dismantled for fittings (and firewood).

Itsy's old stable - 3 mirrors in here (incl. the good overmantel mirror), my husband's old weightlifting bar and weights, an ancient useless sewing machine etc.  I will go through these tomorrow, pre-Tip visit . . .

One little gem turned up - this is a candle sconce, Registered design number 60, which ties it to the Great Exhibition where such a piece of ironwork was on display.  The pretty design shows when the candle support is empty and up.

Finally - those Victorian brass lamp holders . . .

I can see one of tomorrow's jobs will be polishing . . .