Whilst the inside of the new house was left basically clean and emptied of the previous elderly owners’ possessions, the same cannot be said for the garden, or the various outbuildings. I’ve inherited some quite valuable and useful stuff, but also a lot of rubbish and mess that will take quite a lot of time and effort to sort out.

On the positive side, there was a good supply of cut and split logs for the wood burning stove, (the main source of heating in winter), left stacked in the wooden shed in the back garden. Then there was a further stack of cut logs, sitting at the top of the back garden, clearly the unused part of a supply delivered at the beginning of last winter. Last week, Sybille and I spent several hours over two days, moving all of the latter by wheelbarrow, stacking them in the shed, and finally disposing of the ugly bits of plastic sheeting which were meant to be keeping them dry 😉

I’ve also been left quite a number of gardening and building tools. But they were not all in one place but scattered inside or sometimes outside, the various outbuildings. Some seem to just have been left where they were last used, exposed to the joys of a Czech winter! I’ve been slowly gathering them all together and at least putting them somewhere sheltered and dry.

But on the negative side, there is an awful lot of junk that I will need to dispose of somehow. The previous owners were clearly hoarders, unwilling to get rid of anything. The photo below is of one end of the wood shed, which hopefully illustrates my point.

Seeing all of this reminded me of an experience back in 1975. Aided by my then eleven year old nephew, I was clearing out the lean-to building on the side of my widowed mother’s house, which had been the ‘workshop’ of my late father. He too, was a great hoarder. One box we came across had been labelled by my father as ‘Bits & bobs – vaguely useful’ 🙂 There is a lot of stuff left here which also fits into the ‘vaguely useful’ category!

One thing I am going to have difficulty moving is this. It is an electrically driven circular saw for cutting logs, and is sitting in the middle of the back garden. There is a heavy duty power point in the pantry at the back of the house, which is where I presume the lead sitting under the machine should be plugged in. When it was last used and whether it still works, I do not know, but I’m not keen to find out! Clearly before last winter, the previous owners bought in ready cut logs, rather than using this implement.

All the work that has been done to the house – altering and extending it, seems to have been done well. This retaining wall, built to hold back the earth at the back of the house to prevent problems with damp, was only completed last Autumn. But unfortunately, whoever did the work, (I suspect, a younger relative), didn’t dispose of the earth removed so the retaining wall could be built. It remains as this unsightly pile – another major item on the ‘to be disposed of’ list.

As Sybille said several times during the first week, there will be plenty to keep me occupied 🙂