A beautiful light you have in Ireland Mr. Gumby , and the pictures are lovely. It brings to mind a memory of the Isle of Man, there was a water powered carousel in a glade there, and I remember it something like that. Parts of Galicia are known by artists for their light also, but here in Algarve it is unusual, it is usually slightly misty and there is often a temperature inversion or gradient that is like being in a bubble somehow.
This picture shows that a little. Daffodils, not bluebells so much here
Portugal was attached to the northeast coast of the US, and when Pangea fractured Algarve sank underwater for millions of years as Iberia floated around, eventually joining onto France. Europe meeting Africa pushed Algarve back out of the water, so it is tens to hundreds of meters of carbonate on top of salt deposits (as the sea filled in the original fracture and evaporated) , and that on top of more ancient rock. Sometimes these salt deposits form diapers which rise to the surface, because they are lighter and slightly fluid, so there are salt mines here also.
The flora of the region is documented back to the last glaciation, from polen in sediment deposits, which is very interesting. During the glaciation Algarve was a refugia for people (along with some places in southern France), the rest being frozen steppe. As the ice retreated those few thousand people moved north, to Ireland also, and it seems coastal travel, probably by boat, was chosen. The slightly later megalithic culture stretches from Portugal to Ireland, through western France by roughly the same route . The change of flora during neolithic (grazing) is obvious in these samples, as well as the Roman conquest because vast amounts of wood were harvested to smelt silver in nearby Rio Tinto... the Romans were into large industry. Since then the flora has been something like it is now I think, some germanic tribes pillaged their way through to Africa (e.g. the Vandals) where they dissappeared , the Visigoths (another) mostly "lived in the ruins of Rome" in Iberia , before infighting and the Moors, who almost walked their way up to France and ruled for nearly seven hundred years in some places. They brought the oranges I think, but it is only the modern extensive monoculture that is damaging (and to insects also).
Iberia was only fully "reconquered" in 1492 when the Kingdom of Granada fell. 19th century maps of Spain still show the Kingdom of Granada as a territory, as opposed to how it has all been redrawn nowadays.
https://regiondegranada.org/hitos-histo ... e-granada/
I say "reconquered" because the Iberians are not Romans, franks or goths (or Moors). The Moors were not Arabs either, only their leaders (roughly 10% of population apparently ), the rest were north African Berbers. So there is this great confusion between say cultural authority and ancestry/ethnia...and it's not me who is going to set anything straight either.
Anyway, I feel very at home here...the rest of europe sort of came afterwards .
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Myxomatosis is very upsetting , the blindness is temporary from swelling and sinus blockage, but the rabbits then become weak and preyed upon or starve. They breathe through their noses not the mouth so once their noses are blocked also they find it very difficult. Even two weeks of nursing 24/24 was not enough for ours... saline nebuliser, decongestant, antibiotics for possible secondary infection. Those were escaped pets and one wild one that all lived in our garden in Spain, we caught them when we moved and they are house/terrace bunnies only. So they didn't go through the full works and vaccines etc. (which are available, but for the "wild ones" obviously not). Our wild one just sat quietly through it with some swelling though, they have immunity from being descended from survivors of outbreaks in the wild.
I know Oz is a different story, but I have an ethical conundrum on morality wrt all the same...
I look on people as part of nature, though not always a very good part. If rabbits hitch a ride to Oz via people then that is also nature ? Is it also nature that people release a virus on them to control their numbers ? I'm not sure it is right even with best intentions.
This is just one error leading to another maybe, or possibly shows how reckless people can be. Now there is RHD, which first appeared in China in 1984, but which China says came from rabbits from Germany... but it was never an epidemic in europe and existed only as an unnoticeable background virus that caused no ill. That severe strain from China was then let loose in Australia (it escaped/"escaped" from a test island), and is since then travelling around the world. I looked at the attempts at phyllogeny and they aren't able to trace what is going on, or say definitely where outbreaks or new strains actually come from. So that has taken out 50 to 80 % of rabbits left in europe e.g.
http://www.iucn-whsg.org/RabbitHemorrha ... seInEurope
Or from US this report (warning graphic)
https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=9597414
And it is the same with trees and flora. IOD is unusual as they cannot exactly place why it is occuring (as far as I know). A couple of centuries ago they lost almost all their vinyards in the south due to bacteria also, in Ireland the potato famines is notorious. These are partly due to a form of monoculture, but Ash trees?
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Anyway, I wrote this a while back and didn't finish it till now...your photos dissappeared for some reason . I will see if I am up to recording bluebells in the glen, it is a lovely tune... to offer a version on flute might give an idea to how it might sound on wind instrument...have learned it.
@ chas
Don't you have to wear those sort of nail things to play them. I love the sound of that guitar also, but haven't had one in my hands yet.
@AuL
It looks like it is covered in snow, very beautiful.
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These are a few more photos from around here
Cane (also in the top photo)... lots of cane in this part of the world...
....with an orange orchard in foreground...
....prices are so low sometimes (imports from SA apparently) that often oranges are just dumped...
Bluegum, could be Australia at times.
A fig orchard, and the figs here taste like no other...
.... a pruned a Carob tree... wasn't me
... Carob fruit (pods?) are like caramel , when picked before they harden...
...one of our favourite horses that we find on our walks... they like carobs so we almost always carry some with us... her name is Thinker... at least, that is what we call her
And...I feel like I've just written a travel guide.