When I was a girl in Australia on the farm Mum used to get a mad fit of Spring clean this time of the year.
I wonder if she had a Fly Lady.
No just three sisters who all encouraged each other to go crazy.....although Mum's craziness had a cunning twist to it.
The temperature was somewhere up there in the nineties and sis and I would be scrubbing, polishing, sweeping, cleaning windows, all the glass, and painting the miles of veranda floor around the house a cheery red.
All of this was a really deranged waste of time and energy because South Australia suffers from terrible hot North winds during the summer months that blow red dust from the dry center
that covers everything in a red powder....but it was Spring, and Mum and her sisters had to clean.
There was no electrical power so no air conditioning and of course the telephone would continue to run hot with sisterly chatter. Have you made the Christmas puddings, when will you start your cakes? Sigh. The puddings were wonderful, boiled fruit puddings in a cloth Mum would make at least four. The fruit cakes were just as wonderful. I think she made five. One for Christmas the rest for summer eating , one always went to my Gram. Trouble was sis and I would help to cut all the fruit.....nice......
then while we scrubbed and rubbed the wood stove would be working over time, heating the house to a lift off level.
Ah well we were teenagers and a bit of toughening up didn't really hurt us,,,,,,I suppose.
