Jim I sure do not miss that sight! See all that dust in the air I am sneezing and getting runny nose and eyes just from the picture LOL We had corn fields all around our house in the Dallas area and every season at harvest my doctor knew I would be coming in sick as can be. My pool would be full of corn husks and that dusty gritty stuff. So happy we don't have any kind of fields around here. I can now appreciate the beauty from afar with your picture LOL

Maybe some of the more new-fangled windmills have automatic aiming mechanisms. The ones I saw didn't. The one pictured below was a recently re-built mill of an older style that was originally built before 1575. While we were there the resident came out, climbed down these stairs behind the windmill and manually turned the top of the windmill using the big wheel shown here. They then unfurled the sails on the blades and started the windmill going. We toured one of the other windmills there and it was hard to believe that people lived in these things. There is not much space to begin with but there is also this giant, noisy mechanism right in the middle of the space. Maybe in this area they didn't have the auto-aiming mechanism for historical accuracy, or maybe because it is a touristy spot and given how close the blades are to the ground, having the windmills turn unexpectedly in a wind shift and kill an unwary tourist or two would be a bad idea. This post was edited by bob_cville on Fri, Oct 25, 13 at 14:47

Aw! Thanks y'all! Aint nothing little about him any more. He is just about to pass me in height. He's still my fellar. ETA: Sweet Betsy is referencing how I've called him my little fellar (LF) in posts from GardenParty.

It's a detail of a Chihuly sculpture...went to NYBG yesterday and was in awe. If anyone will be in the area, the show continues until the end of Oct.