asakiyume | in the key of C Major

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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.

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From:

amaebi

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....

From:

asakiyume

What cool buildings!

Places where there are remnants of long, long continuous human presence are neat. The way different bits of history are present like different layers of paint or varnish on a place.

From:

amaebi

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.