Sunday wasn’t quite as warm as yesterday, or today, whose unseasonably high temps came to a crashing end amid thunder and lightning and wind. The condition at about 7:30 pm. Sirens wailed from before then till 7:45.

A very spring-like event. Glad it’s over.

But it was warm enough Sunday to stroll a while at one of our default walking places, Spring Valley. We made it to the former farm, where no animals were to be seen. Pigs, cows, chickens, nowhere, though the barnyard odor lingered. No oinks or moos or the flapping of chickens. On vacation? I mused out loud. Off to a meat processing facility? I mused to myself. Kidding, but best not vocalized.

But my quest to see new things, even in very familiar places, and on a granular level, kept me busy. Or if not new things, a new look a them. Such as the wagons.

These look like work wagons. That can lead to a number of musings, such as, what a damn lot of work was involved in running a 19th-century farm. The vehicles are labor-saving devices in their own way, of course, but only so much labor.

It’s not so remarkable that the elderly in our time are in better shape than previous generations, a fact noted from AARP to ZDNET. Nutrition and healthcare are decidedly better now, but the long and short of it is that much work wore people out.

I’m sure I’d seen this bit of farm equipment before. But I’m not sure I’d looked at it. The more I looked, the odder it got.

Someone knows what that is. Locally, maybe someone at the park district. Further away, farmers. Or maybe it’s obvious, and I’m dense. Maybe, but it’s still a puzzler.

I fed the image into TinEye, a reserve image search engine. The results: TinEye searched over 65.7 billion images but didn’t find any matches for your search image. That’s probably because we have yet to crawl any pages where this image appears.

I also took a look at the windmill. Their artistry underappreciated, I believe.

Something was different. Whatever you call that part – the blades? They’d vanished. I was sure of it, and sure enough, when I looked at the picture I took of it in 2012, the difference was clear.

Out for repairs? Stolen for scrap or by a slightly demented collector? Blown down on windy day and wrecked beyond repair? We get those gusts sometimes, see above.