asakiyume: (feathers on the line)
asakiyume ([personal profile] asakiyume) wrote2024-03-18 11:38 am

in the key of C Major

For the daily prompt thing I'm doing, I ended up going down a rabbit hole about windmill sails and came across this story of a miller who restored the last of what used to be many windmills--"the highest concentration of windmills in the Iberian peninsula"--on a mountain in Portugal. Here he is with his windmill in 2019:


Photo by Maria Rebelo Photography; resized from the image at the blog post

He's using the mill to grind ancient wheat grains; he says ants prefer wheat grains that don't have pesticides.

Oh, and those clay pots hanging on the arms of the windmill? They are each tuned to a note in the key of C Major, and you can hear what they sound like in this soundcloud file.
amaebi: black fox (Default)

[personal profile] amaebi 2024-03-19 07:00 am (UTC)(link)
As I batted up on Mallorca in the week before going, even in the plane on the way there, I saw that windmills were a signature feature of a former village, Santa Catalina, now swallowed by Palma. And so I wasn't surprised as I saw a variety of windmill and windmill-inspired graphics on sign faces as Sheeyun drove from the Palma airport to the hotel.

What I didn't realize I would find is that there are windmill remains all over the island-- not at all surprisingly, given that stones mostly let just to wait quietly until their next use.

Somewhat similarly, there are a few sites where the remains of prehistoric buildings called talaiots are specifically preserved-- the link leads to a document about the biggest and most-preserved/excavated one, which we visited. But then I realized that there are remains of talaiots or later very similar constructions all over the place, dotting farmers' fields....
amaebi: black fox (Default)

[personal profile] amaebi 2024-03-19 12:39 pm (UTC)(link)
So, so, so much this.

At the gate, selling the three euro entry, a small coffee bar staffed by one very elderly-looking woman. Just inside the fence, a mysterious shady enclosure housing a depressed-looking peacock. Around the talaiots, soil studded with small stones that has recently been sloughed, I think to limit weeds more than for any other purpose. From a seat on the top wall, I listened to tree sorrows, linnets, a serin. I had a glass of the one beer they sell, Estrella, before we left.
amaebi: black fox (Default)

[personal profile] amaebi 2024-03-20 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)
It was new to me, as well-- and turns out to be in Yorkshire as well.